TOOLS    AND    MACHINES 


TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 


BY 


CHARLES  BARNARD 

EDITORIAL  CONTRIBUTOR  TO  "THE  CENTURY  DICTIONARY0' 


ILLUSTRATED 


SILYEK,    BUKDETT    AND    COMPANY 

NEW  YORK  BOSTON  CHICAGO 


COPTKIGHT,   1903,   BT 

SILVER,  BURDETT  AND  COMPANY 


CONTENTS 


PAGB 

INTRODUCTION         .        .       .        .       ....    11 

CHAPTER 

I.  TOOLS,  UTENSILS,  IMPLEMENTS,  INSTRUMENTS,  AP- 
PARATUS AND  MACHINES        .       .       .       .       .17 
II.  THE  HAMMER     .        .        .       .       .        .       .       .24 

III.  THE  POWER-HAMMERS       .        .        .       .       .  f     .    37 

IV.  THE  KNIFE        .       .       .       .       .       .       „       .48 

V.  THE  CHISEL 59 

VI.  EDGE-TOOLS        . 0    74 

VII.  THE  GREAT  CUTTERS 94 

VIII.  THE  SAW  AND  THE  SAWMILL  .        .       .       .       .  114 

IX.  THE  BORERS 125 

X.  THE  ABRADERS  AND  GRINDERS        .       ...  136 

XI.  WOMAN'S  ANCIENT  TOOLS 143 

XII.  SOME  CLOSING  SUGGESTIONS     .        ,       .       .       .151 

INDEX  .  159 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


THE  WORKERS  IN  METAL  .       .       •       .       .         Frontispiece 

PAGE 

STONE   HAMMER  WITH  WOODEN   HANDLES   BOUND    TO- 
GETHER WITH  CANE .    25 

PREHISTORIC  WAR  CLUB     .    *  .  ••••'...       .       .  .25 

TYPES  OF  HAMMERS     .       .       .  •.       .       *       .30 

MALLETS        .       .       .       ...    -  .       .       .       .       .    31 

A  HAMMER  FOR  PLAY.       .       ,      ..       »       »       .       .32 
A  PILE-DRIVER     .       .        .     \       v       .       .        .        .38 

DROP-FORGING  HAMMER      .•...'.       •       .40 
HORIZONTAL  STEAM  POWER-HAMMER  ...       .  —  .    42 

VERTICAL  STEAM-HAMMER    ..,.>.       .       .       .44 

PNEUMATIC  HAMMER    .       .       .       .       .       .       .       .46 

PREHISTORIC  KNIVES    .       .    v  , 49 

TYPICAL  KNIVES 53 

HAY-KNIFE 55 

DRAW-KNIFE  (COLONIAL  TOOL)    .       .    '   .       .        .       .55 

PREHISTORIC  DRAW-KNIFE 56 

PRIMITIVE  AFRICANS  FORGING  A  KNIFE    .        .        .       .58 
PREHISTORIC  STONE  CHISEL        .        .        .       .       .       .60 

HAND-VISE  CLAMPED  TO  BENCH 62 

CHISELS:    TANG-GOUGE,    TANG-CHISEL,   FRAMING-SOCKET 

CHISEL,  BOX-CHISEL 65 

COLD-CHISELS        .       .    •  ,«  ,  •-, 67 

PNEUMATIC  CHISEL      . 72 

SIDE  PLANE 77 

PLANES:  CIRCULAR,  CORE-BOX  ...  77 


10  ILLUSTRATIONS, 

PAGE 

UNIVERSAL,  HAND-BEADER 78 

UNIVERSAL  PLANE 79 

A  PREHISTORIC  Ax 81 

LATHER'S  HATCHET 82 

TYPE  OF  ADZ 86 

PICK  MATTOCK 88 

MANICURE  SCISSORS 90 

PRUNING-SHEARS 90 

TINSMITH'S  SHEARS 91 

SHEEP-SHEARING  SHEARS .91 

WOOD-CUTTING  TOOL .92 

HYDRAULIC  SHEAR  FOR  CUTTING  METAL  .  .  .  .93 
FOOT-POWER  WOOD-WORKING  LATHE  .  .  .  .96 

LARGE  POWER-LATHE 99 

IRON-PLANER 108 

SHAPER 109 

RIP-SAW 117 

CROSS-CUT  SAW 117 

KEYHOLE-SAW 119 

HACK-SAW 120 

ICE-SAW 120 

CIRCULAR  SAW 122 

PREHISTORIC  BONE  AWL  OR  BORER 125 

CARPENTER'S  AWL 126 

BORERS  :  AUGER,  GIMLET,  ELECTRIC- WIRING  AUGER       .  127 

BRACE  AND  BITS .  129 

RACHET-DRILL       .        .       . 130 

PNEUMATIC  DRILL  .  ^  „  .  ....  131 
PNEUMATIC  ROCK-DRILL  .  .  .  - ' .  .  .  .  133 
ESKIMO  BOW-DRILL  .  .  'V  ..  .  .-  .  .135 
FILES  :  HALF-ROUND,  FOUR-SQUARE,  ROUND  DOUBLE-CUT.  137 
SURFACE-GRINDING  MACHINE  .  .  ...  .  140 

INDIAN  WOMAN  WEAVING 144 

SPINNING-WHEEL  .  .  145 


ONE  of  the  greatest  pleasures  in  the  world  is  to  use 
a  fine  tool  in  doing  good  work.  A  tool  extends  the 
power  of  the  hand.  It  enables  us  to  do  things  we 
could  not  do  without  such  aid.  A  needle  is  a  tool  that 
every  girl  should  be  able  to  use  with  skill.  A  sewing- 
machine  is  a  needle  in  a  machine,  and  it  extends  the 
power  of  the  hand  by  enabling  a  girl  or  a  woman  to  do 
more  needle- work  in  less  time  and  in  a  different  man- 
ner than  she  could  do  with  the  needle  alone.  An  oar 
is  a  tool  every  boy  should  be  able  to  handle  with  pre- 
cision and  power.  It  is  a  tool  of  transportation.  To 
steer  a  naphtha  launch  and  attend  to  its  little  engine  is 
to  use  a  machine  for  transportation.  With  an  oar  a 
boy  can  row  a  boat  with  one  passenger  a  mile.  With 
a  launch  he  can  carry  twenty  passengers  ten  miles  with 
less  labor.  He  can  learn  to  row  in  one  lesson.  To 
manage  a  launch  may  take  a  month's  instruction  and 
practice.  To  row  a  boat  is  to  use  the  boy's  own  un- 
aided strength.  To  manage  the  launch  implies  a 
knowledge  of  the  control  of  an  engine  that  develops 
power,  and  this  implies  a  knowledge  of  navigation, 
that  the  launch  may  be  steered  from  port  to  port  in 
safety. 

The  hammer,  the  saw,  the  knife  and  the  needle  are 


12,    r  ff«    <c.Cc«     ,    .INTRODUCTION 

tools  that  have  come  down  to  us  from  men  who  lived 
long  centuries  ago  in  unknown  lands.  Somewhere  in 
the  dim  past,  when  men  lived  in  trees  or  in  caves,  some 
poor  savage  tried  to  defend  his  children  from  wild 
beasts,  some  mother  tried  to  shelter  her  babies  from 
storms  and  cold.  With  their  hands  alone  they  were 
almost  helpless  against  storms  and  wolves.  Out  of 
their  dangers  they  developed  arms.  In  their  starva- 
tion, cold  and  misery  they  invented  tools.  Ages 
passed,  and  little,  by  little  the  first  rude  tools  were  im- 
proved. Other  men  saw  new  and  better  methods  of 
using  the  old  tools,  and  very  slowly  men  learned  to  use 
tools  in  still  other  and  more  useful  ways,  and  machines 
were  invented. 

Once  all  men  and  women  were  obliged  to  work  hard 
through  long  days  and  nights  to  get  a  little  food,  a  few 
poor  clothes,  and  a  miserable  home.  To-day  they  can 
have  more  and  better  food  and  clothing  and  more  com- 
fortable homes.  There  are  more  things  in  the  world, 
and  yet  there  is  less  labor.  We  can  hardly  compre- 
hend the  suffering,  hunger,  cold,  danger  and  misery 
of  those  poor  half  forgotten  people  who  had  no  tools. 
They  were  hardly  men  at  all.  There  were  no  children, 
only  little  old  men  and  women  toddling  about  in  the 
woods,  eagerly  searching  for  a  fallen  nut  or  wading  in 
the  water  in  search  of  an  oyster  or  a  clam.  And  when 
they  found  an  oyster  they  had  no  knife  with  which 
to  open  the  shell.  They  could  only  smash  the  shell 
with  a  stone  and  tear  out  the  fish  and  eat  it  raw, 
for  there  was  no  fire  by  which  it  might  be  cooked, 


INTRODUCTION  13 

not  even  a  tool  wherewith  to  make  a  fire.  When 
danger  and  starvation  compelled  men  to  invent  tools, 
they  laid  the  foundations  on  which  rest  all  the 
safety,  comfort,  convenience  and  pleasure  that  we 
enjoy  to-day.  We  can,  therefore,  find  no  more  inter- 
esting and  attractive  study  than  the  names,  history  and 
use  of  the  grand  things  we  call  tools  and  machines. 

To  use  a  good  tool  is  a  pleasure  because  it  enables  us 
to  make  something  that  shall  be  useful  and  beautiful, 
for  any  article  that  is  rightly  made  and  that  will  do  good 
work  has  a  real  beauty  of  its  own.  A  good  tool, 
rightly  used,  enables  us  to  express  ideas  in  things  so 
that  when  others  see  these  things  they  will  compre- 
hend the  ideas  we  have  put  into  our  work.  To  express 
ideas  is  one  of  the  greatest  of  pleasures,  and  a  tool  is 
a  mode  of  expression ;  thus  its  very  use  is  a  pleasure 
in  itself. 

A  young  boy  or  girl  may  wish  to  make  a  picture 
frame,  a  box,  a  net,  or  a  rolling-pin  that  will  be  useful 
in  the  kitchen.  The  young  designer  may  have  a  cor- 
rect idea  as  to  the  future  appearance  of  the  thing  to  be 
made  and  yet  b )  unable  to  make  others  understand  ex- 
actly how  the  thing  is  to  appear  when  finished.  The 
first  step  thus  implies  the  use  of  a  tool,  and  this  is  a 
pencil.  The  pencil  is  a  tool  with  which  a  sketch,  plan 
or  drawing  can  be  made.  The  pencil  is  a  tool  that 
enables  the  designer  to  express  his  ideas  so  that  others, 
on  seeing  the  design,  may  with  the  right  tools  make 
the  thing  illustrated  by  the  drawing. 

A  boy  may  have  a  design  for  a  picture-frame  or  a 


TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 


CHAPTER  I. 

TOOLS,    UTENSILS,    INSTRUMENTS,    IMPLEMENTS,    APPARATUS 
AND    MACHINES 

A  MAN  sees  a  ripe  apple  on  a  tree  and  he  pulls  it  from 
the  tree  with  one  hand.  He  may  see  another  apple 
that  is  higher  up  and  beyond  his  reach.  He  picks  up 
a  broken  branch  fallen  from  some  tree  and  with  it  pulls 
the  bough  of  the  apple  tree  down  until  he  can  reach 
the  apple.  In  the  first  instance  he  used  his  unaided 
hands;  in  the  second  he  used  a  tool. 

A  man  sees  a  stone  partly  buried  in  the  ground.  It 
seems  to  be  a  good  stone  to  put  in  the  wall  of  a  house. 
He  tries  to  lift  the  stone,  but  cannot,  and  he  looks  about 
for  a  stout  stick  with  which  to  pry  it  up.  The  stick  is 
a  tool.  He  sees  a  bunch  of  ripe  grapes  on  a  vine  and 
he  finds  a  flat  stone  with  a  sharp  edge  that  he  can  use 
as  a  knife  to  cut  the  stem  of  the  bunch  of  grapes.  The 
sharp  stone  is  a  cutting  tool.  A  girl  sewing  is  using  a 
tool.  A  man  spading  up  a  garden  or  uprooting  weeds 
uses  a  tool.  An  artist  using  a  brush,  or  a  sculptor  a 
chisel  is  doing  work  with  a  tool.  Such  work,  whether 


18  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

'done  by  a  laborer,  a  gardener,  a  painter,  or  a  sculptor, 
is  mechanical  work.  Tools  are  things  used  in  mechan- 
ical work.  A  tool,  in  one  sense,  may  be  anything  with 
which  work  may  be  done.  A  writer  may  call  his 
books,  his  pen  and  his  paper  the  tools  of  his  trade. 
The  captain  of  a  coast-survey  steamer  may  call  his  ship 
a  great  tool.  These  wider  meanings  of  the  word  need 
not  now  concern  us;  we  will  confine  our  attention  to 
those  special  things  used  in  mechanical  work  and  com- 
monly called  tools. 

A  girl  breaks  an  egg  into  a  bowl,  and,  holding  a  fork 
in  one  hand,  beats  the  yolk  and  white  of  the  egg  until 
she  has  a  mixture  of  the  two.  She  has  used  a  tool  in 
doing  mechanical  work,  and  has  made  a  mechanical 
mixture.  She  then  pours  this  mixture  into  a  pan  that 
has  been  prepared  for  it  and  places  the  pan  on  the 
stove.  The  egg  is  now  submitted  to  a  high  tempera- 
ture and,  in  a  few  minutes,  is  entirely  changed  in  ap- 
pearance and  character.  This  change,  imparted  to  the 
egg  by  the  heat,  we  call  a  chemical  change.  We  say  the 
egg  is  cooked,  or  has  been  submitted  to  the  chemical 
action  of  heat.  We  see  at  once  that  this  is  entirety 
different  from  the  mechanical  action  of  beating  the  egg 
with  the  fork. 

The  girl  beats  another  egg  and  pours  the  mechanical 
mixture  into  another  pan  and  places  it  upon  the  stove. 
She  then  stirs  the  mixture  with  a  spoon,  which  is  a 
tool,  while  the  pan  remains  on  the  fire.  Chemical 
action  proceeds  as  with  the  first  egg,  but  to  this  action 
is  now  added  the  mechanical  action  of  the  stirring. 


TOOLS,    UTENSILS,  INSTRUMENTS,   ETC.          19 

The  result  of  this  combined  chemical  and  mechanical 
action  is  quite  different  from  that  obtained  by  the 
chemical  action  alone.  In  the  first  instance  the  egg: 

OO 

became  an  omelet,  in  the  second  a  scrambled  egg. 

In  cooking  the  egg  the  girl  used  another  tool.  The 
pan  in  which  the  egg  was  placed  was  a  tool,  because 
it  did  the  mechanical  work  of  holding  the  egg  while 
on  the  stove.  We  do  not,  however,  call  a  pan  a  tool, 
because  tools  are  used  in  mechanical  work,  and  the  mere 
holding  of  the  egg  is  not  regarded  as  work  with  a  tool. 
We,  therefore,  call  the  pan  a  utensil.  Pots,  kettles, 
skillets,  frying-pans,  griddle-irons,  and  boilers  are 
kitchen  utensils.  Knives,  forks  and  spoons  are  some- 
times called  utensils,  but  they  are  really  kitchen  tools. 

When  a  man  uses  a  hoe  to  mix  sand  and  cement  he 
uses  a  tool  to  make  a  mechanical  mixture.  If  he  then 
adds  water  to  the  mixture,  chemical  action  will  begin, 
and  in  a  few  moments  the  sand  and  cement  will  have 
turned  into  a  hard,  stone-like  material  that  is  unlike  sand 
or  cement.  If,  before  the  water  was  added  and  before 
the  chemical  action  began,  the  man  had  wished  to  sepa- 
rate the  sand  from  the  cement  he  might  have  done  so 
by  sifting  them  through  a  fine  sieve.  He  would  then 
have  had  sand  and  cement.  After  the  water  was  added 
and  chemical  action  began,  and  after  the  mechanical 
mixture  of  sand  and  cement  had  turned  into  the  new 
chemical  compound  called  concrete,  the  man  could  not 
separate  the  sand  from  the  cement.  He  might  grind 
up  the  material  into  powder,  but  it  would  be  only  pow- 
dered concrete.  These  two  experiments  show  us  the 


20  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

difference  between  chemical  and  mechanical  action,  and 
enable  us  to  understand  that  tools  are  things  used  in 
doing  mechanical  work. 

Now,  while  things  used  in  mechanical  work  are  tools, 
they  are  not  all  called  by  that  name.  The  surgeon 
uses  a  saw,  which  is  a  mechanical  tool,  yet  he  prefers 
to  call  it  a  surgical  instrument.  An  instrument  may 
be  anything  used  to  accomplish  a  certain  end.  A  pair 
of  forceps  or  a  drill  or  a  file  used  by  a  dentist  may  be 
called  dental  instruments.  Yet  both  surgeon  and  den- 
tist are  really  using  tools,  though,  for  convenience, 
they  will  call  all  their  tools  instruments.  The  word 
instrument  may  have  even  another  and  a  wider  mean- 
ing, as  when  a  sheet  of  paper,  on  which  is  written  a 
deed,  a  will  or  other  legal  statement  of  facts,  is  called 
an  instrument.  However,  for  our  purposes,  we  will 
recognize  that  tools  are,  in  some  cases,  called  instru- 
ments, and  that  all  instruments  used  in  doing  work  are 
also  tools. 

A  farmer  may  use  a  hoe,  a  spade  or  a  rake  in  doing 
mechanical  work,  and  may  even  tell  us  that  he  keeps 
them  in  his  tool-house.  If  we  go  to  the  maker  of  such 
tools  we  shall  learn  that  he  calls  them,  not  agricultural 
tools,  but  agricultural  implements.  The  surgeon  car- 
ries his  tools  in  an  instrument  case ;  the  farmer  never 
mentions  his  implement-house.  Instruments  and  im- 
plements may  be  tools  of  a  trade,  as  a  flute  or  violin, 
yet  the  musician  would  call  them  his  instruments.  An 
organ  is  really  a  great  mechanical  machine.  It  is  called 
a  musical  instrument. 


TOOLS,    UTENSILS,   INSTRUMENTS,  ETC.         21 

A  girl  in  beating  an  egg  may  prefer  to  use,  in  place 
of  a  fork,  a  little  machine  called  an  egg-beater.  She 
might  tell  us  that  it  was  an  egg-beating  apparatus.  A 
chemist  may  have  some  sea-water  and  may  wish  to 
separate  the  salt  in  it  from  the  water.  He  can  do  this 
by  using  two  bottles,  a  small  lamp,  and  some  glass 
tubes,  and  such  a  collection  of  things  he  calls  a  distill- 
ing apparatus.  The  engineer  of  an  ocean  steamship 
wishes  fresh  water  for  his  boilers  and  he,  too,  uses  a 
very  large  apparatus  to  distill  fresh  water  from  the  salt 
sea- water.  The  fireman  calls  his  steamers,  hose-carts, 
chemical  tanks,  ladders,  trucks,  hooks  and  nets  his  fire- 
apparatus.  An  apparatus  may  be  any  assemblage  of 
parts,  tools,  machines,  or  appliances  designed  to  do 
work  or  accomplish  a  certain  result.  The  electrician 
may  also  call  his  telephone  or  telegraph  electrical 
apparatus. 

A  machine  is  an  assemblage  of  things,  some  one  or 
more  of  which  are  tools,  and  used  to  do  mechanical 
work.  The  girl  would  be  correct  in  calling  her  egg- 
beater  a  machine,  and  the  chemist  is  right  when  he 
calls  his  bottles  and  tubes  a  distilling  apparatus.  A 
girl  in  cooking  may  strain  her  soup  or  jelly  through 
a  cloth  tied  over  the  month  of  a  jar,  and  tell  us  she  is 
using  a  straining  apparatus.  The  girl  may  put  the 
strained  jelly  away  to  cool  under  a  block  of  ice.  The 
ice  is  placed  in  a  tight  box,  and  in  melting  it  chills  the 
air  in  the  box,  and  the  girl  calls  her  refrigerator  a 
cold-storage  apparatus.  A  man  making  ice  or  prepar- 
ing brine  for  use  in  a  cold-storage  warehouse  does  not 


22  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

call  his  great  plant  an  apparatus.  He  says  he  uses  an 
ice-machine;  yet  his  warehouse  itself,  with  its  cold 
rooms  and  glittering,  frost-covered  pipes,  is  nothing 
more  than  a  very  large  refrigerating  apparatus.  To 
distinguish,  however,  his  ice-making  plant  from  his 
cold-storage  house  he  calls  it  his  ice-making  machine. 

A  fisherman  uses  hooks,  floats,  sinkers,  rods  and  lines 
as  tools  in  his  trade,  and  calls  them  his  fishing  tackle. 
Ropes  and  blocks  used  in  hoisting  sails  on  a  ship  or  in 
raising  weights  are  often  called  hoisting  tackle. 

Tools,  utensils,  instruments,  implements,  apparatus, 
tackle  and  machines  are  terms  used  to  designate  tools, 
machines  and  things  used  in  work.  It  may  not  all  be 
mechanical  work,  as  we  have  seen  in  the  case  of  the 
refrigerator  and  the  omelet  pan  and  in  the  making  of 
concrete.  For  our  purposes  we  will  select  the  two 
terms,  tools  and  machines,  for  utensils,  instruments  and 
implements  may  also  be  tools  or  may  be  parts  of 
machines,  while  in  many  instances  some  apparatus 
may  be  also  machines. 

Tools  are  simple ;  machines  are  complex.  Tools  were 
invented  first  and  were  used  for  thousands  of  years 
before  the  first  machine  was  made.  Machines  grow 
out  of  tools,  and  do  on  a  large  scale  and  in  a  large  way 
the  work  that  can  be  done  with  hand  tools  in  a  small 
way.  Tools  may  be  used  slowly;  machines  may  be 
used  at  a  very  high  speed. 

A  hammer  is  a  hand- tool;  a  steam  hammer  is  a 
machine.  A  needle  is  a  tool;  a  sewing-machine  is 
a  thousand  times  larger  than  a  needle,  and  yet  does  the 


TOOLS,    UTENSILS,  INSTRUMENTS,  ETC.         23 

same  work.  A  chisel  is  a  tool;  a  lathe  is  a  machine, 
and  both  are  cutting  tools.  A  gimlet  is  a  tool  used  in 
boring  a  hole ;  a  gang-drill  is  a  great  boring-machine 
that  bores  many  holes  at  once.  A  saw  is  a  tool;  a 
sawmill  is  a  great  sa wing-machine.  A  rolling-pin  can 
be  used  to  spread  a  sheet  of  dough;  a  rolling-mill  may 
spread  out  tons  of  steel  into  great  sheets  fit  for  the  sides 
of  a  ship.  A  rubber  stamp  may  be  used  to  print  fifty 
letters  at  once;  a  printing-press  may  print  fifty  thou- 
sand letters  at  one  time. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE    HAMMER 

To  understand  the  very  beginning  of  tool-making  we 
sbould  endeavor  to  imagine  how  it  happened  that  men 
first  used  a  tool.  This  was  centuries  ago,  long,  long 
before  men  had  any  means  of  making  a  record  of  the 
things  they  saw  or  did,  and  we  can  only  make  a  picture, 
as  it  were,  of  the  unknown  man  who  first  used  a  tool. 
He  was  a  poor,  helpless  savage,  living  in  trees.  He  had 
never  even  dreamed  of  a  bow  and  arrow.  He  could 
not  imagine  such  a  thing  as  a  spear  or  a  knife,  and  yet 
the  woods  were  full  of  terrible  wild  beasts.  He  knew 
only  that  if  a  wolf  appeared  he  must  scramble  into  the 
nearest  tree  to  save  his  life.  Perhaps  this  man  was 
one  day  in  an  open  space 'in  the  forest  when  a  wolf 
attacked  him.  There  was  no  time  to  reach  a  tree. 
He  must  fight  or  be  torn  to  pieces  by  the  wolf.  A 
limb  of  a  tree,  broken  off  by  the  wind,  lay  near  him, 
and  in  his  desperate  need  he  picked  it  up  to  defend 
himself.  It  was  a  club — a  tool,  and  with  it  he  struck 
the  wolf  on  the  head.  To  his  amazement,  the  blow 
killed  the  beast.  The  broken  limb  was  a  hammer,  and 
with  it  He  had  cracked  the  wolf's  skull.  With  what 
wonder  he  must  have  looked  upon  the  stick.  It  was 


THE  .HAMMER 


25 


a  precious  thing — a  weapon  and  defense  against  wolves. 

He  would  keep  so  valuable  a  thing,  keep  it  for  his  sons 

and  his  sons'  sons  as  something  to 

be  preserved  and  treasured  with  the 

greatest  care.     It  must  have  been 

some  such  desperate  necessity  that 

led  to  the  invention  of  the  first  tool, 

and  it  is  quite  probable  that  this 

first  tool  was  a  club  or  a  hammer. 
The  use  of  clubs  would,  in  time, 
spread  from  man 
to  man  until  ev- 
eryone would  own 
and  use  a  war  club. 
Perhaps,  long  af- 


some 


other 


Prehistoric  War  Club 


ter, 

man  carrying  a 
club  would  find  a 
plant  whose  roots 
were  good  to  eat. 
The  club,  he  might 

discover,   would  be  useful  in  prying 
the  plants  out  of  the  ground  to  get 
the  roots.     Another  man  or  woman, 
perhaps  long  after,  and  in  some  other 
country,  might  find  the  club  very  use- 
ful in  cracking  the  bones  of  animals 
to  extract  the  sweet  marrow,  or  to 
smash  an  oyster  shell  to  obtain  the  fish  inside  the 
shell.     We  may  never  know  where  or  when  these  first 


Stone  Hammer  with 
wooden  handles  bound 
together  with  cane 


26  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

experiments  were  made.  We  can  guess  only  that  in 
some  such  way  men  first  learned  to  use  tools.  The 
search  for  food  and  defense  against  wild  beasts  was 
the  inspiration;  common  things,  like  the  limb  of  a  tree 
or  a  round  stone,  were  the  things  that  suggested  the 
means  to  an  end.  What  was  wanted  was  something 
that  would  strike  a  smashing  blow.  A  man's  fist  could 
deliver  a  blow,  but  in  giving  the  blow  the  hand  might 
be  injured.  A  stick  or  a  hard  stone  held  in  the  hand 
would  do  the  work  without  injury  to  the  hand.  It  is 
quite  possible  that  a  club  or  a  stone  used  as  a  ham- 
mer was  the  first  tool,  and  we  may  well  begin  our 
studies  with  the  ancient  tool  that  we  now  call  the 
hammer. 

To  study  a  tool  we  must  see  it;  we  must  make  ex- 
periments with  it,  because  in  an  experiment  we  try 
things  to  see  how  they  behave  under  certain  condi- 
tions, and  from  their  behavior  we  learn  the  laws  gov- 
erning their  use.  Get  a  nail,  a  small  piece  of  soft  pine, 
a  brick  or  flat-iron  and  a  carpenter's  hammer.  The 
hammer  consists  of  two  distinct  parts,  the  head  and 
the  handle.  The  handle  is  of  hard  wood,  beautifully 
moulded  to  fit  the  hand,  just  large  enough  to  be  grasped 
firmly,  slightly  tapering,  to  prevent  the  hand  from 
slipping,  and  of  just  the  right  length.  The  steel  head 
has  a  face  or  striking  surface  with  which  to  strike  the 
blow.  It  has  also  a  claw,  the  use  of  which  we  shall 
observe  presently. 

Now  place  the  wood  on  a  bench  or  some  firm  sup- 
port about  three  feet  from  the  floor,  and  with  the 


THE  HAMMER  27 

left  hand  hold  the  nail  upright  on  the  wood.  Grasp 
the  hammer  firmly  in  the  right  hand  about  one-third 
of  the  length  from  the  end  and  rest  the  hammer 
head  on  the  nail.  Nothing  happens.  The  weight  of 
the  hammer  produces  no  visible  effect  on  the  nail. 
We  may  even  press  upon  the  hammer  with  all  our 
strength,  but  beyond  a  slight  dent  in  the  wood 
just  under  the  point  of  the  nail  there  is  no  effect, 
certainly  no  useful  effect.  Next,  resting  the  face 
of  the  hammer  squarely  on  the  head  of  the  nail, 
raise  the  hammer  a  few  inches  and  then  put  it 
gently  back  again.  This  trains  the  eye  and  hand  to 
guide  the  hammer  in  striking  a  quick,  hard  blow  on 
the  head  of  the  nail.  Strike  one  blow  and  observe 
that  the  nail  sinks  into  the  wood  and  stands  upright. 
Strike  another  blow  and  it  sinks  deeper.  We  observe 
that  the  hammer  is  a  tool  for  giving  a  sudden  impact 
or  driving  blow,  therefore  we  call  it  a  tool  of  percus- 
sion. 

The  experiment  teaches  us  that  there  is  a  difference 
between  placing  the  hammer  slowly  and  gently  on  the 
nail  and  the  quick  blow.  Under  the  mere  weight  of 
the  hammer  resting  on  the  nail  the  particles  of  wood 
immediately  under  the  point  of  the  nail  resist  the  pres- 
sure and  hold  up  nail  and  hammer.  Under  the  quick 
blow  they  give  way  and  the  nail  sinks  into  the  wood. 
The  experiment  shows  that  there  is  another  matter  to 
be  considered,  and  this  is  time.  Under  the  slow  pres- 
sure the  particles  of  wood  had  time  to  adjust  themselves 
.to  the  pressure;  under  the  quick  blow  they  broke  and 


28  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

gave  way.  We  can  lay  the  hammer  on  an  inverted 
teacup  and  the  frail  china  ware  will  support  it  un- 
harmed. Drop  the  hammer  suddenly  on  the  cup  and 
it  breaks.  Place  two  inverted  glass  tumblers  upon  the 
floor  and  you  can,  if  careful,  step  upon  them  and  they 
will  sustain  your  weight.  Drop  one  glass  on  the  floor 
and  it  will  break  with  its  own  weight.  We  may  press 
with  all  our  strength  on  the  glass  and  not  break  it,  yet 
we  can  easily  smash  it  with  one  blow  of  the  fist. 
Clearly,  there  is  a  difference  between  a  pressure  and  a 
quick  blow — a  useful  bit. of  information  in  carrying 
eggs. 

These  experiments  teach  another  matter.  Should 
we  attempt  to  break  the  teacup  or  glass  with  the  hand 
it  is  quite  possible  we  might  cut  or  injure  the  hand. 
The  hard  steel  face  of  the  hammer  head  saves  us  from 
this  injury.  Now  hold  a  nail  upright  on  a  brick  and 
strike  it  with  the  hammer.  Be  careful  in  this  experi- 
ment that  the  nail  does  not  fly  off  and  do  some  harm 
under  a  bad  blow,  or  that  it  does  not  bend  or  give  way 
and  injure  the  hand.  Next,  strike  the  hammer  on  the 
bare  brick.  Observe  that  in  both  cases  the  hammer 
accomplishes  nothing,  or  recoils  as  if  it  had  received 
a  return  blow.  It  meets  with  resistance,  and  no  useful 
effect  is  accomplished. 

Hold  a  nail  upright  on  a  piece  of  wood  and  try  to 
drive  it  in  by  using  another  piece  of  wood  as  a  ham- 
mer. We  see  that  such  a  wooden  hammer  is  dented 
or  split,  and  the  nail  is  hardly  driven  in  at  all. 
Clearly,  the  resistance  affects  the  wooden  hammer,  and 


THE  HAMMER  29 

the  force  spent  in  the  blow  is  wasted  in  part  on  the 
hammer. 

Go  on  striking  the  nail  until  it  sinks  into  the 
wood  up  to  the  head.  The  last  blow  "  drives  it  home  " 
or  sinks  it  until  the  top  of  the  nail  is  level  with  the 
surface  of  the  wood.  It  requires  great  skill  and  long 
practice  to  do  this,  and  we  shall  probably  find  that  the 
last  blow  has  left  an  ugly  scar  on  the  wood.  This  is 
bad  work.  The  nail  must  be  ' '  sent  home ' '  and  the 
wood  left  uninjured. 

We  observe  that  the  carpenter  driving  nails  in 
handsome  wood  or  in  wood  exposed  to  the  weather 
never  mars  the  wood  with  hammer  marks.  He  omits 
the  last  blow  and  then  places  a  small,  slender  piece  of 
steel,  called  a  "nail-set,"  upright  on  the  head  of  the 
nail  and  strikes  the  blow  on  the  end  of  the  nail-set. 
This  drives  the  nail  home  without  injuring  the  wood, 
beyond  the  small  hole  made  by  the  nail  itself.  These 
experiments  show  us  that  even  such  a  simple  thing  as 
driving  a  nail  is  an  accomplishment  well  worth  learning. 

The  carpenter's  hammer  is  sometimes  called  a  claw- 
hammer. Opposite  the  face  is  a  double  toe,  or  claw, 
curved  back  towards  the  handle.  The  inner  edge  of 
the  slot  between  the  claws  is  beveled,  and  the  slot  is 
narrow  at  the  bottom  and  wide  at  the  top.  Suppose 
we  wish  to  draw  out  a  nail  that  is  half  driven  in  the 
wood.  We  put  the  claws  over  it  and  observe  that  the 
head  of  the  nail  is  wedged  in  between  the  claws.  By 
bending  the  hammer  backward  as  it  rests  on  the  wood 
we  use  it  as  a  lever  to  pull  or  draw  out  the  nail.  The 


30  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

claw-hammer  is  thus  a  compound  or  double  tool — ham- 
mer and  nail-puller. 

Of  all  the  many  kinds  of  hammers,  only  a  few  are 
single  tools  for  striking  blows  only,  and  such  hammers 
have  usually  two  faces — one  at  each  side  of  the  head. 
A  blacksmith's  hammer  and  the  mason's  stone-breaking 
hammer  are  examples  of  these  simple  hammers  with 
double  faces.  Compound  hammers  have  a  face  at  one 


Types  of    Hammers 

side  of  the  head  for  striking  a  blow,  and  the  other  side, 
called  the  "  peen,"  is  quite  another  kind  of  tool.  The 
peen  may  be  a  claw,  a  pick,  a  wedge,  a  shovel,  a  chisel 
or  an  awl.  The  peen  may  thus  become  a  second  tool 
used  with  a  hammer  and  having  the  same  handle. 

There  are  about  fifty  different  styles  of  hammers, 
each  one  having  a  trade  name.  They  are  of  every  size, 
from  a  tack-hammer,  weighing  a  few  ounces,  up  to 
the  blacksmith's  great  straight-handled  sledge-hammer, 


THE  HAMMER 


31 


weighing  twenty  pounds  or  more.  Many  are  named 
after  the  trade  in  which  they  are  used,  as  bricklayer's 
hammer,  miner's  hammer,  gold-beater's  hammer,  etc. 
Some  are  named  after  the  work  in  which  they  are  used, 
as  creasing-hammer,  chasing-hammer.  A  man  laying 
paving  blocks  uses  a  short-handled  hammer  called  a 
paver's  hammer,  with  a  heavy  head  and  a  peen  shaped 
like  a  curved,  sharp-edged 
hoe.  A  bricklayer '  s  ham- 
mer has  a  peen  shaped 
like  a  small  ax  that  can 
be  used  to  " dress"  bricks 
into  shape. 

A  ramrod  is  a  long- 
handled  hammer  with  the 
face  in  line  with  the  han- 
dle. It  is  used  to  load  a 
muzzle-loading  gun.  A 
paver's  rammer  is  a  heavy 

iron  hammer  with  two  handles  near  the  top.  It  is  lifted 
in  both  hands  and  let  fall  on  its  end,  or  face,  to  drive 
home  a  paving  block.  A  long-handled  wooden  hammer 
used  in  tamping  soil  round  a  post  set  in  the  ground  is  also 
called  a  post  or  trench-rammer.  A  mallet  is  a  wooden 
hammer  with  a  short,  straight  handle  and  large,  round 
wooden  head.  It  is  used  in  fine  stonework  and  sculp- 
ture. A  long-handled  hammer  with  a  small  wooden 
head,  and  used  in  the  game  of  croquet  is  also  called  a 
mallet.  A  billiard  cue,  a  baseball  bat,  a  tennis  racket, 
all  the  instruments  used  in  golf,  are  hammers.  A 


Mallets 


32 


TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 


maul  or  beetle  is  a  large  hammer  with  a  wooden  head, 
used  in  driving  a  wedge,  in  splitting  logs  or  driving 
down  a  stake,  or  in  driving  sheet-piling  to  protect  an 
embankment.  A  woodchopper's  maul  has  a  wedge- 
shaped  peen  and  the  railroad  spike  maul  has  one  large 
face  and  one  small  face.  A  gavel  is  a  small  hammer 

used  by  the  presiding  of- 
ficer of  a  meeting  as  a  sig- 
nal to  attract  attention.  A 
drumstick  is  a  hammer, 
and  the  strings  of  a  piano 
are  struck  by  felt-covered 
hammers  just  as  the  ham- 
mers of  a  pianola  strike 
the  keys  of  the  piano  itself. 
The  tongue  of  a  bell  is  a 
hammer.  The  rolling  ball 
that  sounds  a  fog -bell  is 
also  a  hammer.  A  girl 
Q.  beating  a  carpet  is  using 

A  Hammer  for  Play  ,  , 

a  hammer,  though  it  may 

look  like  a  wicker  fan  on  a  long  handle.  The  men  at 
Bunker  Hill  used  flint-lock  guns  that  were  fired  by  a 
spark  struck  from  a  flint  by  a  hammer,  and  in  their 
canvas  haversacks  they  carried  bread  made  from  wheat 
threshed  out  by  a  flail — a  curious  hammer  with  a  long 
wooden  head,  called  a  souple,  affixed  by  a  swivel  joint 
to  a  handle. 

The  stone-mason,    millstone  dresser    and    marble- 
worker  use  hammers  with  compound  faces.     A  bun- 


THE  HAMMER  33 

die  of  rods  with  sharp  points  or  a  bunch  of  flat, 
sharp-edged  steel  plates  may  be  clamped  together  or 
wedged  together  in  a  box  to  form  a  hammer-head. 
Such  multiple-faced  hammers  strike  many  blows  at 
once  and  are  excellent  for  finishing  or  dressing  stone 
surfaces.  Blacksmiths,  machinists,  coopers,  jewellers 
and  plumbers  use  many  different  hammers  of  varied 
shapes  and  sizes  and  bearing  special  names.  For 
instance,  a  goldbeater  uses  a  commencing-hammer,  a 
spreading-hammer,  and  a  finishing-hammer,  according 
to  the  progress  of  his  work. 

A  carpenter,  having  only  one  arm,  finding  it  diffi- 
cult to  drive  small  nails  with  one  hand,  thought  of  the 
idea  of  magnetizing  his  steel  hammer-head.  With  such 
a  magnet  hammer  he  could  pick  up  a  tack  by  its  head 
and  with  one  blow  drive  it  into  the  wood  hard  enough 
to  make  it  stand  alone.  Then  he  could  drive  it  home. 
Such  magnetized  hammers  for  driving  brads  and  tacks 
are  now  used  in  many  trades. 

A  blacksmith  heats  a  bar  of  iron  in  his  fire  until  it 
is  soft.  He  then  lays  it  upon  some  firm  support,  and 
with  his  hammer  beats  or  forges  it  into  the  shape  he 
requires.  This  support  he  calls  an  anvil.  The  black- 
smith's anvil  is  a  square  block  of  iron  or  steel,  having 
a  smooth  top  or  face.  At  one  side  there  are  holes  of 
different  sizes  and  shapes,  and  on  the  opposite  side  is 
a  projecting  beak  or  horn.  By  means  of  these  holes, 
the  beak  and  the  flat  face,  he  works  his  hot  iron  into 
a  great  variety  of  useful  forms,  and  will  forge  almost 
anything  from  a  horseshoe  to  a  pot-hook.  So  we 
3 


84  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

always  speak  of  the  hammer  and  anvil  as  the  two  tools 
that  go  together.  All  work  done  with  the  hammer, 
all  shaping,  bending,  twisting,  spreading  or  welding 
metals  by  blows  must  be  done  on  some  form  of  anvil. 
The  hammer  blows  fall,  not  on  the  anvil,  but  upon  the 
work  that  rests  thereon,  and  the  shape  of  the  anvil  de- 
termines the  form  of  the  finished  work.  The  anvil  is 
hard,  and  resists  the  impact  of  the  hammer,  but  red- 
hot  iron  is  relatively  soft,  and  between  hammer  and 
anvil  takes  any  shape  the  skillful  workman  wishes.  So 
we  shall  see,  with  nearly  every  hammer,  be  it  great  or 
small,  some  form  of  anvil. 

All  the  great  family  of  tools  used  as  hammers  have 
come  from  the  club  or  the  stone  tied  to  a  stick,  used  by 
primitive  men.  All  have  assumed  their  present  varied 
forms  through  the  efforts  of  thousands  of  unknown  and 
earnest  men,  who  sought,  through  trial  and  experi- 
ment, to  learn  what  is  the  best  shape  for  a  hammer  in 
doing  any  work.  The  more  complex  and  varied  the 
work  the  more  varied  the  hammers,  so  that  to-day  the 
hammer  is  a  specialized  tool  of  the  very  highest  value 
and  efficiency. 

We  have  only  to  look  about  and  we  shall  see  in  every 
art,  trade,  and  manufacture  many  varied  forms  of  this 
ancient  tool.  Even  a  bird  may  know  the  use  of  a  ham- 
mer, as  when  a  crow  steals  an  egg  and,  wishing  to 
break  it,  lifts  it  in  its  claws,  and  flying  up  in  the  air, 
lets  it  fall,  and  then  with  a  proud  and  thankful "  caw  " 
flies  down  to  the  dinner  so  cleverly  obtained.  How- 
ever, there  was  once  a  tame  crow  who  stole  a  porcelain 


THE  HAMMER  35 

nest-egg  and  tried  this  hammer  method  of  cracking 
the  egg,  only  to  be  puzzled  and  disappointed  at  the 
result. 

To-day  the  American  hammer,  whatever  its  name  or 
use,  is  a  splendid  tool,  admirably  designed  for  its  spe- 
cial work.  It  is  the  finest  tool  of  percussion  ever  made 
— a  tool  that  it  is  a  pleasure  to  see  and  to  use.  To  the 
eye  trained  to  see  the  true,  the  useful,  and  effective,  a 
good  hammer  is  a  handsome  tool.  Never  before  were 
such  fine  tools  made,  never  before  were  they  used  in  so 
many  different  ways,  and  never  before  was  it  so  impor- 
tant as  now  to  know  and  understand  the  use  of  good 
tools. 

In  using  this  grand  tool,  we  train  the  eye,  the  hand, 
and  the  mind.  The  eye  must  guide  the  hand  and  the 
mind  guide  the  work,  or  we  may  break  the  nail, 
dent  the  wood,  injure  ourselves,  or,  what  is  far 
worse,  spoil  the  work.  We  can  mend  broken  skin  with 
courtplaster,  but  a  beautiful  piece  of  maple  injured  by 
hammer  marks  can  never  be  repaired. 

To  drive  a  nail  seems  a  simple  thing,  yet  no  one  can 
do  it  well  the  first  time.  Just  how  to  hold  the  nail 
that  it  shall  not  split  the  wood,  to  drive  it  home, 
straight  and  true  and  just  far  enough  without  injuring 
the  wood,  is  a  little  accomplishment  which  no  one  need 
be  ashamed  to  acquire.  Skill  comes  with  practice,  and 
it  is  the  practiced  hand,  using  a  fine  tool,  that  produces 
the  finest  results,  be  it  at  a  bench  or  a  piano.  It 
is  not  the  driving  of  the  nail,  but  the  skill,  the  knowl- 
edge, the  training  in  good  work  it  brings  that  is  valuable. 


36  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

No  one  can  afford  to  say  that  he  need  not  learn  to  use 
this  ancient  tool. 

On  other  pages  will  be  seen  drawings  of  some  of  the 
many  forms  in  which  hammers  are  now  made,  and  it 
will  be  well  to  examine  them  all  with  care,  that  we  may 
be  able  to  recognize  their  names  and  use  them  with  skill. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE    POWER-HAMMERS 

A  MAN  may  wish  to  drive  a  long,  pointed  log,  called 
a  pile,  on  which  to  rest  a  bridge  or  wharf,  into  the  mud 
or  sand  of  the  seashore  or  into  the  bed  of  a  river.  The 
pile  may  be  twenty  feet  long,  and  while  with  the 
proper  tools  he  might  manage  to  set  it  upright  in 
the  mud,  he  could  not  drive  it  into  the  mud  with  the 
largest  maul  that  he  could  handle.  He  therefore 
uses  a  machine-hammer  or  power-hammer  called  a  pile- 
driver. 

A  pile-driver  consists  of  two  tall  uprights  of  wood, 
properly  braced  and  held  in  position  upon  a  scow  or 
upon  a  platform  erected  over  the  place  where  the  pile  is 
to  be  driven.  These  wooden  uprights  serve  as  guides 
for  a  very  large  and  heavy  hammer  called  a  "  monkey. " 
The  monkey  is  fitted  with  iron  lugs  or  wings  at  the 
sides  that  just  fit  the  two  guides,  so  that,  while  it  is 
free  to  slide  up  and  down  between  the  guides,  it  cannot 
escape  on  either  side.  At  the  top  of  the  hammer  is  a 
ring,  and  in  this  may  be  caught  a  double  hook  or  tongs 
to  which  is  fastened  a  long  rope.  This  rope  leads  up 
between  the  guides  to  the  top,  where  it  turns  over  a 
small  wheel  resting  on  the  top  of  the  guides  and  then 


38 


TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 


runs  down  to  the  ground  where  it  passes  through  a 
block  securely  fastened  to  the  ground.  The  end  of  the 
rope  is  fastened  to  a  wooden  bar  secured  to  the  traces 
of  the  harness  of  a  horse.  Just  under  the  wheel,  at 
the  top  of  the  machine,  there  are  two  triangular  pieces 

of  wood  placed  between  the 
guides,  the  rope  passing 
between  them.  Suppose, 
now,  a  tall  pile  has  been 
placed  between  the  guides, 
ready  to  be  driven  into  the 
mud,  the  monkey  hanging 
suspended  above  the  pile. 
When  all  is  ready  the  horse 
steps  forward,  pulling  on 
the  rope  and  lifting  the 
hammer  to  the  very  top  of 
the  guides.  Here  the  trian- 
gular pieces  pinch  the  tongs 
and  the  claws  open,  letting 
the  weight  fall  on  the  head 
of  the  pile  and  driving  it  home  by  a  series  of  falls 
on  its  head. 

Here  is  plainly  a  machine-hammer,  operated  by  the 
power  of  the  horse.  When  the  weight  has  fallen  the 
horse  backs,  the  rope  slips  down  till  the  tongs  again 
bite  the  ring  in  the  weight,  and  then  the  horse  moves 
forward,  lifting  the  hammer  until  it  is  again  released 
and  delivers  another  blow.  A  pile-driver  operated  in 
this  way  is  said  to  be  operated  by  horse-power.  The 


A  Pile-driver 


THE  POWER-HAMMERS  39 

hammer  might  also  be  raised  by  men  turning  a  windlass, 
but  the  work  would  be  slow  and  expensive.  A  steam 
hoisting-engine  is  usually  used  with,  such  pile-drivers, 
and  such  machines  are  said  to  be  operated  by  steam- 
power.  We  can  also  properly  say  that  such  a  machine 
is  a  power-hammer,  to  distinguish  it  from  a  hand- 
hammer. 

A  man  may  wish  to  forge  some  small  piece  of  iron, 
a  bolt,  a  hook,  or  a  part  of  some  machine.  He  can 
heat  the  metal  in  a  fire  and  then  forge  it  into  the  re- 
quired shape  with  a  hammer  on  an  anvil.  This  might 
be  all  right  for  one  piece,  but  if  he  wanted  a  thousand 
pieces,  all  exactly  alike,  this  method  would  take  too 
much  time  and  labor.  The  thousand  pieces  would  be 
so  costly  that  people  could  not  afford  to  buy  them. 
That  would  not  be  good  business;  he  must  use  a  power- 
hammer  that  will  do  the  work  quickly  and  cheaply, 
and  that  will  turn  out  each  piece  exactly  like  every 
other  piece.  We  say  he  must  manufacture  the  pieces 
with  a  power-tool,  and  the  tool  he  will  select  for  this 
work  will  be  a  drop-press. 

A  drop-press  is  a  machine  having  two  upright  guides 
placed  over  a  fixed  anvil,  with  a  weight  or  hammer 
suspended  between  them  over  the  anvil.  By  the  use 
of  simple  machinery  the  weight  can  be  raised  above 
the  anvil  and  made  to  fall  upon  it.  The  face  (bottom) 
of  the  hammer  is  cut  into  the  exact  shape  of  the  object 
to  be  made  by  the  drop-press.  The  anvil  may  also 
have  a  face  of  the  shape  of  the  object.  The  man  oper- 
ating the  drop-press  has  a  supply  of  pieces  of  metal 


TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 


called  "  blanks,"  and  as  the  hammer  rises  he  has  time 
to  lift  a  blank  in  his  tongs  and  place  it  on  the  anvil. 
The  hammer  falls,  and  at  one  blow  the  metal  is  struck 

or  forged  into  the  exact 
shape  cut  in  the  faces  of  the 
hammer  and  anvil.  The 
blank,  when  the  hammer 
again  rises,  may  be  removed 
from  the  anvil  and  another 
blank  put  in  its  place.  All 
such  pieces  will  be  exactly 
alike,  and  as  they  are  forged 
in  a  drop-press  they  are 
called  drop-forgings.  Such 
a  power  -  hammer  works 
faster  than  any  man  with  a 
hand-hammer,  and  it  does 
better  work  at  a  great  sav- 
ing of  time  and  labor,  and 
as  these  cost  money,  at  a 
less  cost  of  manufacture. 
There  are  many  different 
styles  and  sizes  of  these  drop- 
forges.  We  need  not  stop 
to  examine  them  all  in  de- 
tail, as  our  aim  is  to  understand  what  is  meant  by  a 
power-hammer.  The  monkey  of  a  pile-driver  may 
weigh  a  thousand  pounds  and  the  hammer  of  a  drop- 
press  used  in  a  factory  may  weigh  only  ten  pounds, 
and  while  the  two  machines  only  slightly  resemble 


Drop-forging  Hammer 


THE  POWER-HAMMERS  41 

each  other,  yet  were  we  to  see  them  we  would  recog- 
nize that  each  is  a  power-hammer. 

In  mining  it  is  often  necessary  to  extract  the  gold  or 
other  metals  embedded  in  the  ore-stone  by  pounding 
the  stone  into  powder.  This  can  best  be  done  by  a 
smashing  blow  from  a  hammer.  As  such  work  could 
not  be  done  by  hand,  except  at  very  great  expense,  we 
find  at  such  mines  great  machines  called  stamp-mills. 
A  stamp-mill  consists  of  a  row  of  heavy  wooden  beams 
shod  with  iron,  standing  between  guides  upon  massive 
anvils.  By  the  use  of  simple  machinery  these  beams, 
called  stamps,  are  lifted  above  the  anvils  and  let  fall 
upon  them,  while  a  stream  of  the  rock  slides  down  upon 
the  anvils.  The  ore  is  said  to  be  "  fed  "  to  the  stamps, 
and  under  the  terrific,  crashing  blows  of  the  huge 
stamps  it  is  rapidly  crushed  to  powder.  It  is  after- 
wards a  comparatively  easy  matter  to  extract  the  gold 
from  the  powdered  stone.  A  row  of  stamps  is  called 
a  battery,  and  such  a  battery  of  stamps  represents  the 
largest  and  most  powerful  power-hammering  machine 
except  one,  in  the  world. 

As  long  as  all  hammers  were  used  by  hand,  men  had 
to  confine  their  work  to  small  things.  A  blacksmith 
could  make  a  nail,  a  horseshoe,  or  a  crane  for  a  fire- 
place, or  the  links  of  a  small  chain.  When  the  loco- 
motive was  invented  it  was  found  that  we  must  use 
larger  and  more  powerful  hammers  to  forge  the  axle 
of  the  new  engine.  This,  and  the  demand  for  other 
work  like  it,  led  to  the  general  use  of  the  oldest  and 
the  most  simple  of  the  power-hammers — the  trip-ham- 


42  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

mer.  This  useful  machine  was  invented  before  the 
locomotive,  but  it  was  the  invention  of  the  engine,  and 
more  particularly  the  invention  of  the  steamboat,  that 
led  to  the  general  use  of  the  trip-hammer.  Before  that 
time  it  had  been  used  in  a  small  way  for  heavy  f org- 
ings.  Now  it  became  exceedingly  useful,  and  it  was 
at  once  greatly  increased  in  size  and  power.  A  trip- 


Horizontal  Steam  Power-hammer 

hammer  resembles  a  hand-hammer  held  in  a  horizontal 
position.  The  hammer  is  placed  at  the  end  of  a  heavy 
beam  pivoted  near  the  opposite  end.  By  means  of 
simple  machinery  the  handle  was  raised  and  then 
"  tripped  "  or  let  fall,  when  the  hammer-head  delivered 
its  blow  upon  the  anvil.  All  these  tripping  or  tilting 
hammers  were,  at  first,  operated  by  water-power,  and 
in  the  first  half  of  the  last  century,  in  New  England, 
did  much  to  make  the  forging  of  shovels  and  other 
large  tools  cheap  and  rapid.  Later  they  were  operated 


THE  POWER-HAMMERS  43 

by  steam  power.  They  are  still  used  in  forging  many 
comparatively  small  pieces  of  metal  work,  but  have  in 
many  shops  been  superseded  by  the  drop-press  and  by 
their  great  rival,  the  steam-hammer. 

The  first  step  in  the  evolution  of  the  steam-hammer 
came  from  an  attempt  to  improve  the  common  trip- 
hammer. The  plan  was  to  place  a  steam  cylinder  under 
the  handle  and  to  use  the  expansion  of  steam  to  lift  the 
hammer.  The  idea  was  good,  but  it  did  not  prove  to  be 
very  practical,  and  is  only  interesting  as  showing  the  first 
attempt  to  use  the  direct  expansion  of  steam  to  move 
a  hammer.  In  1838,  Nasmyth,  of  England,  planned  his 
really  great  invention — the  steam-hammer.  His  idea 
was  to  use  the  piston-rod  of  an  upright  steam-engine 
as  the  handle  of  a  hammer  that  could  move  up  and 
down  between  vertical  guides.  The  valves  of  the  en- 
gine were  to  be  operated  by  hand  to  admit  steam  above 
or  below  the  piston.  When  steam  was  admitted  below, 
the  piston  would  rise  and  lift  the  hammer.  Then,  on 
letting  the  steam  escape,  the  hammer  would  fall  upon 
the  anvil  below.  By  admitting  steam  above  the  piston 
as  it  fell,  the  force  of  the  blow  would  be  enormously 
increased.  By  admitting  steam  both  above  and  below 
the  piston  at  the  same  time,  the  hammer  could  be  hung 
suspended  over  the  anvil  or  be  made  to  deliver  light  or 
heavy  blows,  quick  or  slow  blows,  at  the  will  of  the 
operator  Nasmyth's  idea  was  one  of  the  greatest  of 
modern  conceptions,  and  when  carried  out  in  actual 
practice  it  gave  us  the  most  powerful  and  most  costly 
machine-hammer  in  the  Avorld.  Steam-hammers  are 


TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 


now  made  in  many  sizes,  from  small  machines  for  forg- 
ing the  ironwork  of  a  carriage  or  other  light  work,  to 
the  giant  labor  of  forging  the  shaft  of  an  ocean  steam- 
ship. So  perfect  is  the  operation  of  one  of  these  Titan 
hammers  that  the  engineer  can  crack  an  egg  with  it, 

or  deliver  terrific,  smashing 
blows  that  will  mold  a  ton 
of  iron  into  any  shape  he 
wishes. 

The  steam-hammer  and 
the  drop-press  are  types  of 
all  the  most  common  and 
useful  power-hammers.  The 
smaller  machines  are  called 
dead-stroke  hammers,  drop- 
hammers,  pig-iron  breakers, 
etc. ,  and  all  use  a  hammer 
moving  between  vertical 
guides  and  operated  by 
means  of  lifting  machinery 
or  by  the  direct  expansion  of 
steam.  Some  deliver  blows  at  a  regular  speed,  others 
at  variable  speeds,  or  at  the  will  of  the  operator. 

In  addition  to  these  machine-hammers  there  are  other 
machines  that,  while  given  other  names,  are  really 
power-hammers.  In  the  carpet-beating  machine  wooden 
rods  arranged  in  a  battery  beat  or  strike  the  carpet  as  it 
passes  under  them.  It  is  thus  a  form  of  machine-ham- 
mer. A  batting-machine  or  scutching-machine,  em- 
ploys beaters  that  slap  or  thrash  raw  flax  or  cotton 


Vertical  Steam-Hammer 


THE  POWER-HAMMERS  45 

to  beat  out  the  dirt  and  dust,  and  it  is  thus  a  form 
of  machine-hammer.  In  the  manufacture  of  shoes, 
pegs,  brads  or  small  nails  are  driven  into  the  shoe 
sole,  and  a  pegging-machine  is  properly  a  variety  of 
machine-hammer.  A  box-nailing  machine  that  will 
drive  eight  nails  at  once  into  the  corners  of  a  box  is 
clearly  a  gang-hammer,  or  small  battery  of  hammers 
operated  by  machinery.  Such  a  machine  is  called  a 
nailer,  and  its  principal  work  is  nailing  shoe  or  other 
packing  boxes. 

After  the  invention  of  the  steam-hammer  it  was 
thought  that  compressed  air  could  be  used  in  such 
machines  in  place  of  steam.  Such  pneumatic  hammers 
did  not  at  that  time  come  into  general  use.  We  did 
not  then  understand  the  use  of  compressed  air,  and 
these  atmospheric  hammers,  as  they  were  called,  were 
soon  forgotten. 

With  the  invention  of  larger  and  more  powerful 
compressors,  compressed  air  came  to  be  better  under- 
stood, and  many  new  tools  were  invented  for  employing 
this  very  convenient  method  of  distributing  power. 
Among  these  new  tools  was  the  rock-drill,  and  from 
the  rock-drill  came  the  latest  and  finest  of  all  the  power- 
hammers,  the  pneumatic  hammer.  This  new  and  re- 
markable machine  sprang  from  the  demand  for  a  small, 
self-acting  hammer,  which  would  deliver  blows  of  mod- 
erate power  at  a  very  high  speed.  A  pneumatic  ham- 
mer consists  of  an  iron  cylinder  designed  to  be  held  in 
the  hands,  and  containing  a  piston  with  its  rod  and  the 
proper  valves  to  operate  the  piston  as  a  little  engine  or 


46 


TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 


motor,  using  compressed  air  in  place  of  steam.  This 
little  reciprocating  engine,  when  supplied  with  air 
under  pressure,  delivered  through  a  hose,  will  run  at 
a  very  high  speed,  and  we  can  easily  see  that  if  the 
piston-rod  has  a  hammer-head  at  the  end,  we  shall 
have  a  power-hammer.  Such  a  hammer,  held  in  any 
position  before  any  anvil  or  any  work  placed  upon  an 
anvil,  will  deliver  a  blow  at  every  stroke  of  the  piston- 

rod,  and  with  suf- 
ficient air-pressure 
will  give  from  200 
to  1,000  blows  a 
minute.  Such  a 
swiftly  moving 
hammer  would  be 
useless  in  driving 
nails,  but  for  long 
and  heavy  work 
in  iron,  such  as 

,,  -,-1    .  ,  ,    , 

"  caulking,  '  beat- 
ing down  the  seams  between  the  plates  of  an  iron  ship, 
or  in  forging  rivets  into  place  or  in  dressing  stone  or 
marble  it  is  an  exceedingly  useful  tool. 

The  pneumatic  hammer  is  so  new  that  we  do  not  yet 
know  all  that  it  can  do.  It  is  one  of  the  finest  of  mod- 
ern machine  tools,  and  every  month  new  uses  are  found 
for  its  swiftly  flying  hammer.  In  the  foundry  the 
f  oundryman  in  making  his  molds  rams  the  soft,  loamy 
sand  into  his  flasks  with  a  mallet.  The  pneumatic 
hammer  will  do  the  work  far  better  and  twenty  times 


Pneumatic  Hammer 


THE  POWER  HAMMERS  47 

as  fast.  A  large  pneumatic  hammer  resembling  a 
paver's  rammer  will  ram  down  paving-blocks  or  level 
the  sand  in  great  molds  in  a  foundry.  The  stone- 
mason and  the  sculptor  have  found  it  to  be  a  new  and 
wonderful  kind  of  mallet  in  their  beautiful  work  of 
dressing  building  stone  or  carving  statues  or  in  making 
the  many  useful  forms  of  marble  used  in  our  homes, 
churches  and  office  buildings.  We  shall  examine  this 
splendid  new  power-hammer  again  when  we  come  to 
examine  that  ancient  tool,  the  chisel. 

We  have  seen  that  to  use  a  hand-hammer  requires 
skill,  and  that  its  proper  use  is  a  real  training  for  hand 
and  eye.  To  use  these  grander  tools,  the  great  power- 
hammers,  and  this  new  and  wonderful  machine,  the 
pneumatic  hammer,  teaches  even  more,  for  to  use  them 
requires  a  higher  skill  and  a  greater  training.  A  man 
may  earn  two  dollars  a  day  driving  shingle  nails  on  a 
roof.  A  man  may  earn  five  dollars  a  day  controlling 
some  gigantic  steam-hammer.  A  sculptor  with  his 
chisels  and  a  mallet  and  aided  now  by  a  pneumatic 
hammer,  may  earn  ten  thousand  dollars  in  one  grand 
piece  of  work  by  making  a  beautiful  marble  statue. 


CHAPTEE  IV 

THE    KNIFE 

LONG  centuries  ago  some  savage  hunters  may  have 
killed  a  bear.  The  bear's  tough,  hairy  hide  would  be, 
in  their  eyes,  very  valuable  as  clothing  and  as  a  cover 
for  a  shield.  The  difficult  thing  to  do  would  be  to  get 
the  bear's  hide  off.  Without  some  kind  of  cutting  tool 
it  would  be  impossible.  If  it  were  near  the  seashore 
the  hunters  might  readily  see  that  the  sharp  edge  of 
a  clam  shell  would  make  a  very  fair  kind  of  cutting 
tool.  Perhaps  the  hunters  had  seen  among  the  moun- 
tains thin  flakes  of  a  glassy  mineral  that  we  now  call 
natural  glass  or  obsidian.  They  perhaps  found  flakes 
of  a  very  hard  stone,  to-day  called  flint,  and  such  flakes 
of  flint  or  obsidian  would  make  rude  cutting-tools  with 
which  they  might  cut  and  strip  off  the  hide  of  the  bear. 
We  can  easily  imagine  that  it  was  perhaps  in  this  way 
men  first  learned  to  make  and  use  a  knife.  Then,  per- 
haps, long  after,  some  bright  man  thought  of  the 
idea  of  tying  or  fastening  in  some  way  such  a  stone 
blade  to  a  wooden  handle,  and  then  he  would  have 
a  tool  composed  of  two  parts,  a  cutting-blade  and 
a  handle,  and  this  would  be  a  real  knife.  Such  ob- 
sidian knife-blades,  bored  with  holes  for  the  cord  to 


THE  KNIFE 


pass  through,  can  be  seen  at  the  New  York  Museum 
of  Natural  History. 

The  history  of  the  knife  is  a  long  story.  It  began 
with  shells  and  sharp  stones,  or  with  bits  of  hard  wood, 
centuries  before  men  learned  to  write,  so  we  may  be 
sure  it  was  a  tool  in  universal  use  long  before  history 
began  to  be  recorded.  When  men  learned  to  use  cop- 
per and  iron  the  shell 
and  flint  knives  disap- 
peared, for  a  metal 
knife  could  be  made 
much  sharper  than  any 
of  the  old  stone  ones. 
To-day  all  knife-blades 
are  made  of  steel,  ex- 
cepting a  few  where  a 
sharp  edge  is  not  so 
important,  as  the  ivory 
blade  of  a  paper-knife. 

Get  your  pocket- 
knife,  and  let  us  examine  it.  This  pocket-knife  is  the 
boy's  handy  tool.  Every  boy  and  every  girl  should 
have  one,  and  should  know  how  to  use  it  with  skill 
and  in  safety.  It  consists  of  a  steel  handle  covered 
with  bone.  This  bone  is  rough,  so  that  the  fingers 
have  a  firm,  strong  hold  upon  the  handle.  There 
is  a  blade  hinged  at  the  end  by  means  of  a  little  pin 
passing  through  a  hole  in  the  thick  end  of  the  blade 
and  securing  it  to  the  handle.  On  examining  the  blade 
we  see  there  is  a  little  channel  or  nick  near  the  back  of 
4 


Prehistoric  Knives 


50  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

the  blade,  and  by  putting  the  thumb-nail  into  this  nick 
we  can  easily  pry  the  blade  up  out  of  the  place  where 
it  rests  in  the  handle.  Then  we  can  bend  it  back  until 
it  is  in  line  with  the  handle.  "We  say  we  have  opened 
the  knife.  Just  as  the  blade  comes  in  line  with  the 
handle  we  hear  a  slight  click,  and  then  we  find  that  the 
blade  is  held  quite  firmly  in  its  place.  We  examine 
the  knife  and  find  that  there  is  a  spring  in  the  back 
of  the  handle,  and  it  was  this  spring  that  caused  the 
little  click  and  that  holds  the  blade  firmly  in  position. 
When  we  wish  to  close  the  knife  we  press  on  the  back 
of  the  blade  and  again  we  hear  the  click  of  the  spring 
as  the  blade  slips  back  into  its  place.  "We  see  that  the 
spring  serves  a  double  purpose,  in  holding  the  blade 
steady  when  the  knife  is  open,  and  in  keeping  it  safe 
and  snug  in  the  handle  when  not  in  use,  and  thus  pre- 
venting the  knife  from  doing  any  harm  when  carried 
in  the  hand  or  the  pocket.  If  there  are  other  blades 
in  the  knife  we  find  they  all  work  in  the  same  way. 
Three  blades  is  the  usual  number — a  large  blade,  a 
small  one  and  a  little  finger-nail  file  with  a  very  small 
blade  at  the  end.  With  such  a  pocket-knife  we  can 
do  a  great  variety  of  work  and  make  various  useful 
things.  Many  pocket-knives  have  more  blades  or  have 
other  attachments,  such  as  a  screw-driver,  a  hook, 
a  corkscrew  and  other  more  or  less  useful  things. 
Such  knives,  however,  are  heavy  and  troublesome 
to  carry,  and  are  chiefly  useful  in  camping,  or  in 
the  country  where  it  may  be  important  sometimes 
to  have  a  hook  to  pull  a  stone  out  of  the  horse's 


THE  KNIFE  51 

shoe  o*  to  cut  a  hole  in  a  strap  to  fit  the  tongue  of 
a  buckle. 

Let  us  get  a  stick  of  soft  pine  and  see  what  we  can 
do  with  our  pocket-knife.  Open  the  large  blade  and 
hold  the  knife  in  the  right  hand  and  the  stick  in  the 
left.  Now  be  careful.  We  are  to  use  an  edge-tool 
and  there  is  a  wise  old  saying 'about  the  danger  of 
"  playing  with  edge-tools. "  Should  we  hold  the  wood 
in  the  left  hand  and  with  the  right  hand  draw  the  knife- 
blade  towards  us  we  might  very  soon  find  out  just  what 
the  old  saying  means.  Hold  the  blade  against  the 
wood  and  push  it  away  from  you.  Then  there  is  no 
danger  that  the  knife  will  slip  and  cut  the  hand  or 
strike  the  body.  This  seems  a  simple  rule,  and  yet  we 
shall  see  that  is  the  one  almost  universal  rule  in  using 
all  kinds  of  cutting-tools,  the  exception  being  the  spoke- 
shave,  or  draw- knife.  Always  keep  the  back  of  the 
blade  facing  in  the  opposite  direction  to  the  cutting 
stroke.  Hold  the  knife  firmly,  with  the  blade  resting 
nearly,  but  not  quite,  flat  on  the  wood.  See  exactly 
what  you  mean  to  do  and  then  make  one  swift,  sharp 
stroke  outward  along  the  wood.  A  long,  thin  shaving 
flies  off,  and  we  see  that  the  stick  has  a  new  shape. 
This  is  the  work  of  the  knife — to  give  a  new  shape  to 
the  stick.  The  stick  may  be  square,  and  by  taking  off 
a  piece  from  each  corner  you  give  the  four-sided  stick 
eight  sides.  By  repeating  the  strokes  you  can  easily 
change  the  square  stick  into  a  smooth  round  one.  Thus 
we  see  that  the  knife  is  a  shaper  or  shaping  tool.  The 
stick  may  be  round,  and  we  can  cut  or  whittle  it  into  a 


52  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

triangular  or  a  square  shape,  or  give  it  this  shape  for 
part  of  the  length  and  another  shape  for  the  remaining 
length.  We  can  whittle  out  of  a  round  stick  a  boom 
for  a  miniature  sailboat  or  make  a  ruler  or  a  paper- 
cutter  or  a  salad  spoon.  We  can  even  whittle  the  stick 
up  into  toothpicks.  One  thing  we  will  not  do,  and 
that  is  idly  and  aimlessly  to  whittle  it  to  pieces  and 
make  nothing  at  all.  That  would  be  very  unwise,  for 
thereby  we  should  learn  nothing  new  and  waste  a  good 
piece  of  wood.  Whatever  you  do,  decide  beforehand 
just  what  you  intend  to  make — and  make  it. 

Once  there  was  a  young  man  who  wished  to  marry 
a  farmer's  daughter,  so  he  called  on  the  father  to  get 
his  consent  to  the  marriage.  The  farmer  was  at  work 
in  the  barn,  and  the  young  man  sat  down  and  began 
to  whittle.  After  he  had  said  all  he  wished,  he  threw 
away  the  stick  he  had  been  whittling.  "Now,"  said 
the  farmer,  "  I  noticed  that  while  you  were  asking  for 
my  daughter's  hand  you  were  using  your  ppcket-knife. 
I  thought  you  meant  to  make  something.  Instead  of 
that  you  spoiled  a  good  piece  of  wood  and  made  noth- 
ing at  all.  I  guess,  young  man,  you  are  not  the  right 
husband  for  my  daughter." 

A  pocket-knife  is  a  grand  tool  for  any  boy  or  girl 
who  wishes  to  make  things.  It  is  wonderful  how  many 
things  can  be  made  out  of  a  piece  of  fine  wood;  not 
merely  pretty  or  curious  things,  like  a  ring  in  a  bottle 
and  other  odd  objects  that  cost  time  and  work  and  that 
when  finished  are  not  worth  the  labor  spent  upon  them. 
Make  something  useful  or  beautiful,  for  a  really  beauti- 


THE  KNIFE 


53 


ful  thing  is  always  valuable.  Always  decide,  in  ad- 
vance just  what  you  intend  to  do.  Have  a  clear  idea 
of  the  shape  and  dimensions  of  the  object.  The  best 
plan  is  always  to  make  a  drawing  of  the  thing  to  be  made 
and  then  to  reproduce  the  drawing  in  wood  with  your 
knife. 

A  good  plan  is  to  begin  with  some  simple  thing  like 
a  ruler  or  paper-cut- 
ter. Learn  to  cut  true 
and  square,  making 
everything  exactly 
according  to  pattern. 
Learn  to  use  the  large 
blade  for  rough  shap- 
ing out,  and  the  small 
blade  to  give  a  fine, 
smooth,  accurate  fin- 
ish. Endeavor  to 
make  things  that  you 
will  care  to  keep  and 
use,  or  things  that  you  will  be  proud  to  give  to  friends 
as  samples  of  good  work  and  that  your  friends  will  be 
glad  to  receive,  because  it  is  your  work  and  because 
it  proves  you  know  how  to  do  good  work.  This  is 
the  lesson  of  the  knife — to  be  true,  square,  exact, 
accurate. 

The  moment  we  look  about  we  find  that  there  are 
a  great  many  different  kinds  of  knives.  On  the  table 
there  is  the  butter-knife,  the  carving-knife,  the  bread- 
knife,  the  fruit-knife,  the  fish-knife  and  the  table-knives. 


Typical  Knives 


54:  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

In  the  kitchen  we  shall  also  find  the  chopping-knife. 
Each  has  a  blade  and  a  handle,  and  they  differ  only  in 
size  or  in  the  shape  of  the  blade,  and  we  see  that  each 
is  adapted  to  its  particular  use,  and  that  it  would  be 
very  unwise  to  try  to  carve  the  turkey  with  the  butter- 
knife  or  to  pare  an  apple  with  the  carving-knife. 

A  young  man  was  once  eating  his  lunch  in  a  railroad 
car  when  the  train  ran  off  the  track.  He  had  just  put 
his  knife  into  his  mouth  when  the  shock  of  the  accident 
caused  the  knife  to  cut  his  mouth.  He  sued  the  rail- 
road company  for  damages,  but  the  judge  said  he  had 
no  case. 

When  we  go  out  among  the  men  who  use  tools  we 
see  that  knives  are  used  in  every  art  and  trade.  The 
surgeon  has  a  great  variety  of  beautiful  knives  for  his 
delicate  and  important  work.  The  carpenter,  the  shoe- 
maker, the  butcher,  the  dairyman,  the  gardener,  the 
glazier,  the  harnessmaker  each  uses  a  number  of  dif- 
ferent knives  adapted  to  his  special  work  and  all  hav- 
ing specific  names.  The  gardener  has  his  pruning- 
knife,  his  grafting-knife,  and  his  budding-knife;  the 
grocer,  his  cheese-knife ;  the  butcher,  his  butcher-knife ; 
the  fishman,  his  oyster-knife,  and  so  on  through  every 
craft  and  art.  Some  knives  are  very  small,  like  the 
lancet,  others  are  very  large,  like  the  planter's  cane- 
knife.  Some  have  sharp  points,  some  have  rounded 
points. 

Some  knives  have  the  handle  placed  at  a  right  angle 
with  the  blade.  The  farmer  in  cutting  hay  from  the 
haymow  in  his  barn  uses  a  large  knife  with  such  a 


THE  KNIFE  55 

right  angle  handle.  He  calls  it  a  hay-knife.  The 
gardener  in  trimming  the  edges  of  his  lawn  may  use 
a  large  knife  with  a  curved  blade.  He  calls  it  a  grass- 
knife.  In  old  times  all  grains  like  wheat  or  oats  wero 
cut  down  with  such  a 
curved,  crescent  -  shaped 
knife,  called  a  sickle. 


This  is  one  of  the  oldest  Hay-Knif< 

knives  of  which  we  have 
any  record.  The  ancient  Egyptians  used  sickles  in 
their  rice  and  wheat-fields ;  sometimes  such  sickles  had 
a  straight  handle  at  the  end  of  the  blade,  and  some- 
times a  bent  handle  or  a  handle  placed  at  an  angle 
with  the  blade.  The  new  moon  is  sometimes  called  a 
sickle,  because  it  resembles  the  blade  of  a  sickle  or 
grass-knife,  and  there  is  a  cluster  of  stars  in  one  of  the 
constellations  also  called  by  that  name. 

One  very  useful  knife  has  a  long  blade  with  a  cut- 
ting-edge on  one  side,  and  a  handle  at  each  end,  placed 
at  a  right  angle  with  the  blade.  Sometimes  the  han- 
dles are  hinged,  so  that  they  can  be  held  in  any  posi- 
tion desired,  and  can  be 
kept  in  such  position  by 
means  of  a  set-screw. 
(Colonial  Tool)  ||  guc}1  a  two-handled  knife 
is  called  a  draw-knife, 
because  it  is  used  with  both  hands  and  is  pulled  or 
drawn  forward  in  making  a  cut  with  the  blade.  An- 
other two-handled  knife  is  the  shave,  and  the  wheel- 
wright uses  a  two-handled  knife  which  he  calls  a 


56  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

spokeshave,  in  shaping  the  spokes  of  a  wheel,  and 
that  suggests  a  plane,  as  we  shall  see  in  studying  that 
tool. 

This  form  of  two-handled  or  drawing  knife  is  very 
old,  for,  in  the  Museum  of  Natural  History,  we  can 
see  bones  split  open  to  give  two  cutting  edges.  Such 
bone  knives  were  used  by  prehistoric  people. 

A  half-moon  knife  has  a  crescent-shaped  blade  with 
two  handles.  It  is  used  by  the  currier  in  dressing 
hides,  and  is  sometimes  called  the  currier's  knife.  A 
double  or  parallel  knife  has  two  blades  placed  side  by 


Prehistoric   Draw-Knife 


side.  It  is  used  to  slice  off  very  thin  sections  or 
slivers  of  any  soft  substance.  In  some  knives  the  blade 
is  pivoted  at  one  end  and  has  a  handle  at  the  other 
end.  These  are  used  in  cutting  paper  or  tobacco.  The 
cutting-edge  is  on  the  side  of  the  blade,  and  makes 
what  is  called  a  shearing  cut.  A  razor  is  a  very  sharp 
knife  having  a  hinged  handle.  This  is  one  of  the  old- 
est of  tools.  A  race-knife  has  a  bent  cutting-blade  for 
marking  or  scribing.  It  is  more  of  a  marking-tool 
than  a  knife,  though  it  has  a  little  cutting  or  scratch- 
ing blade. 

The  largest  of  all  the  knives  is  the  scythe.  It  is  a 
very  old  tool,  and  yet  the  finest  scythes  in  the  world 
are  to-day  made  and  used  in  this  country.  We  have 


TEE  KNIFE  57 

tine  grassland,  and  the  scythe  is  the  hand  grass-cutter 
or  mower.  The  blade  is  long  and  slender,  sharply 
curved  and  ending  with  a  sharp  point.  It  has  a  long, 
curved  handle  called  the  helve,  placed  at  a  right  angle 
with  the  blade.  It  is  used  in  both  hands  by  grasping 
small  handles  on  the  helve.  The  mower  swings  his 
scythe  in  a  great  sweep  through  the  grass,  mowing  a 
wide  swath  or  path  through  it.  It  is  a  grand  sight  to 
see  a  good  mower  cutting  grass,  and  it  is  a  fine  thing 
to  be  able  to  swing  a  scythe  in  the  hayfield  on  a 
July  afternoon.  Scythe-blades  are  made  of  different 
sizes  and  shapes  for  different  work.  A  grass-scythe 
has  the  longest  blade.  The  clover-scythe  has  a  shorter 
and  wider  blade.  A  scythe  for  cutting  weeds  or  bram- 
bles has  a  still  shorter  blade,  and  the  kind  used  for 
mowing  down  small  bushes  has  a  very  short,  stout 
blade.  A  grain-scythe  has  a  long  but  thick  blade, 
and  is  the  heaviest  of  all. 

The  knife  has  given  its  name  to  a  number  of  other 
things,  as  a  knife-file,  or  a  file  resembling  a  knife 
blade ;  a  knife-rest,  which  is  a  glass  or  metal  holder  for  a 
table-knife.  Anything  with  a  sharp  edge  may  be  said  to 
have  a  knife-edge,  like  the  sharp-edged  support  of  the 
balance  beam  of  a  weighing  scale.  A  wooden  slicer 
for  cutting  ice-cream  is  called  a  cream-knife,  and  is, 
like  the  paper-folder  or  paper-cutter,  a  dull-edged  knife. 
Some  ancient  war  arms  having  a  blade  and  a  handle 
were  called  battle-knives,  such  as  the  sword,  the  hal- 
berd and  the  dagger.  However,  these  are  arms,  and 
are  not  tools  at  all. 


58 


TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 


The  surgeon  uses  a  number  of  small  and  very  beauti- 
ful knives  that  have  curious  shapes  and  more  curious 
names.  His  knives  are  made  of  the  finest  steel  and 
are  the  sharpest  knives  in  the  world.  He  keeps  them 
in  beautiful  order  in  his  instrument  case,  for  when  he 
uses  them  it  may  mean  life  or  death,  accordingly  as 
they  are  or  are  not  in  perfect  order. 


<:„ 


Primitive  Africans  Forging  a  Knife 


CHAPTEK  Y 

THE   CHISEL 

IN  studying  the  hammer  we  observed  that  a  great 
number  of  tools  grew  out  of  the  simple  hand-hammer. 
In  the  same  way,  from  the  original  shell  knives  have 
come  many  useful  and  interesting  tools  that  are  not 
called  knives,  and  yet  are  cutting- tools.  At  the  de- 
partment store,  we  shall  find  that  the  table-knives  and 
many  small  knives,  like  the  pocket-knife,  are  called 
cutlery.  Other  and  larger  cutting-tools  are  called 
edge-tools.  The  gardener  uses  a  pruning-knife  to  trim 
his  pear  trees,  and  buys  it  of  the  cutler  at  the  cutlery 
department.  The  lumberman  cuts  down  a  great  tree 
with  an  ax,  a  carpenter  uses  a  chisel,  and  the  ship- 
wright an  adz,  and  all  three  are  using  edge-tools  that 
they  buy  at  the  hardware  store. 

At  such  a  store  we  may  ask  to  see  edge-tools,  and 
the  store-keeper  will  show  us  a  large  collection  of 
beautiful  and  interesting  tools,  each  one  having  some 
form  of  cutting-edge.  One,  the  dealer  tells  us,  is  a 
chisel.  We  find  it  has  a  long,  narrow  blade,  fastened 
to  a  wooden  handle,  blade  and  handle  being  in  one 
line.  The  end  of  the  blade  is  cut  off  at  an  angle.  We 
say  it  is  beveled,  or  has  a  beveled  edge,  the  lower  side 


60 


TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 


being  very  sharp.  This  beveled  edge  is  formed  by 
grinding  the  blade,  and  it  is  called  the  bezel.  The 
head  of  the  handle  is  flat  and  suggests  an  anvil,  and 
shows  that  the  tool  is  to  be  used  with  a  hammer. 
As  it  is  of  wood,  the  best  plan  is  to  use  it  with  a 
wooden  mallet,  because  a  steel  hammer  might  mar  tho 
handle. 

The  chisel  is  one  of  the  oldest  tools  in  the  world. 
Chisels  have  been  found  buried  in  mounds  that  were 
made  by  men  who  lived  in  our  country 
before  history  began  to  be  recorded. 
Pictures  on  old  monuments  show  plainly 
that  the  ancient  Egyptian  carpenter  had 
a  chisel  in  his  tool-bag,  and  used  it  with 
a  mallet. 

We  decide  to  take  the  chisel,  and  we 
purchase  at  the  same  time  a  foot  rule 
and  a  pencil,  and,  unless  we  already 
have  one,  we  buy  also  a  wooden  mallet. 
On  reaching  home  we  place  a  small 
piece  of  pine  board  on  our  work-bench 
and  lay  our  purchases  beside  it.  A  good,  folding  foot 
rule,  that  will  fit  an  inside  pocket,  is  one  of  the  first 
things  a  boy  or  girl  should  own.  It  is  the  universal 
standard  of  simple  measurements,  and  our  best  plan  is 
to  keep  one  in  the  pocket,  for  we  shall  soon  discover 
that  we  need  it  every  day,  and  often  a  dozen  times  a 
day.  It  is  a  guide  in  mental  arithmetic,  for  it  enables 
us  to  learn  to  add  and  subtract  in  inches  and  fractions 
of  inches.  It  gives  us  accurate  ideas  of  the  sizes  and 


THE  CHISEL  61 

dimensions  of  things,  and  in  using  it  we  train  ourselves 
to  be  exact  and  accurate  in  our  work  and  our  state- 
ments concerning  work  and  things. 

Lay  the  piece  of  board  on  the  bench,  and  with  the 
rule  and  pencil  mark  off  upon  it  at  one  corner  a  square 
of  one  inch  each  way.  Turn  the  board  over  and  repeat 
the  inch  marks  on  the  opposite  side  and  then  join  the 
marks  together  across  the  side  and  end.  Now  hold  the 
chisel  upright  on  one  mark,  with  the  bezel  facing  out- 
ward, and  with  the  mallet  in  the  right  hand  strike  one 
sharp  blow  on  the  handle  of  the  chisel.  The  chisel 
sinks  in  the  wood,  making  a  mark  that  is  sharp  on  one 
edge  and  bent  or  beveled  on  the  other.  Move  the 
chisel  along  on  the  mark  and  repeat  the  blow.  Do 
this  along  all  the  marks,  except  those  on  the  end. 
The  angular  cuts  form  with  the  corner  of  the  board  a 
square,  one  inch  each  way.  Lastly,  hold  the  board 
on  edge,  sidewise,  and  make  one  cut  across  at  the 
ends  of  the  pencil  marks. 

ISText  we  set  the  board  upright  on  end  (the  grain  of 
the  wood  being  vertical),  and  prepare  to  make  the  next 
cut.  Just  here  we  discover  that  it  would  be  very  help- 
ful to  have  some  means  of  holding  the  board  upright. 
Some  one  might  hold  it  for  us,  but  this  is  not  a  good 
plan,  as  the  person  holding  the  board  would  be  in  the 
way,  and  might  be  hurt  should  the  board  slip.  We 
are  using  an  edge-tool,  and  the  first  thing  to  consider 
with  edge-tools  is  safety,  both  for  ourselves  and  for 
others.  The  board  should  be  placed  in  a  vise.  A  vise 
is  an  apparatus  for  holding  any  material  on  which 


62  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

work  is  to  be  done.  A  carpenter's  vise,  such  as  would 
be  used  with  his  work-bench,  consists  of  two  parts  just 
alike,  and  called  the  jaws.  One  jaw  is  fixed  to  the 
bench  and  the  other  is  movable,  and  the  two  are  joined 
together  by  means  of  a  wooden  or  a  metal  screw. 
When  the  screw  is  loose  the  piece  of  board  we  are 
using  can  be  slipped  between  the  jaws  in  any  position 
we  wish.  Then,  on  turning  the  screw,  the  jaws  come 
together  and  bite  or  hold  the  board  firmly. 

Whatever  work  we  do  we  should 
use  the  best  tools.  We  can  get 
along  without  a  vise  for  holding 
our  work,  yet  in  doing  the  best 
work  we  shall  find  it  most  valuable. 
In  metal  work  we  can  hardly  do 
without  one,  and  we  will  stop  just 
a  moment  to  examine  a  good  vise. 
The  accompanying  picture  repre- 
sents a  small  and  convenient  vise 
u  clamped  to  a  bench.  The  clamp 

Hand.Vise   Clamped  to  Bench 

has  two  horizontal  arms  at  the 
side,  the  lower  arm  carrying  a  screw  that,  by  means 
of  the  handle,  can  be  screwed  up  tight  against  the 
under  side  of  the  bench.  The  vise  itself  rests  in  the 
hollow  clamp  and  is  kept  firmly  in  place  by  a  set- 
screw  below,  as  shown  by  the  two  wings  of  the  handle. 
The  vise  is  of  steel  and  has  two  jaws  having  roughened 
faces  to  give  a  good  bite  or  hold  on  the  work  when 
placed  between  the  jaws.  A  screw,  with  winged 
handle,  draws  the  jaws  together  or  pulls  them  apart 


THE  CHISEL  63 

at  will.  The  vise  can  also  be  used  in  the  hand  to  hold 
metals,  wire  or  small  woodwork.  The  clamp  itself, 
even  without  the  vise,  is  a  handy  thing  to  have  on  our 
work-bench.  It  will  come  into  use  in  a  dozen  dif- 
ferent ways  in  using  our  tools. 

Place  the  board  upright  in  the  vise,  with  the  end 
about  waist-high  or  in  convenient  reach.  Place  the 
chisel  upright,  close  to  the  edge  of  the  board,  the  bezel 
facing  out,  on  the  upper  end.  Give  it  a  light  tap  with 
the  mallet,  and  a  thin  chip  splits  off  down  to  the  chisel 
cuts  on  the  sides  of  the  board.  Repeat  this  till  a 
square  piece  or  shoulder  is  cut  out  of  the  board.  Now 
we  see  the  value  of  the  chisel.  It  is  a  cutter  or 
shaper.  It  cuts  to  shape,  and  does  far  more  than 
could  be  done  with  a  knife.  We  can  use  it  to  cut 
wood  into  many  useful  forms  or  shapes;  for  this  rea- 
son we  call  it  a  shaping-tool.  We  also  see  "now  the 
value  of  the  pencil  marks  on  both  sides  of  the  board,  as 
they  guide  us  to  a  correct  cut. 

Mark,  with  the  rule  and  pencil,  a  square  near  the 
middle  of  the  board,  one  inch  each  way.  Cut  with 
the  chisel  all  round  this  mark,  holding  the  chisel 
upright,  with  the  bezel  facing  the  inside  of  the  square. 
Now,  hold  the  chisel  at  an  angle  in  the  upper  or  lower 
cut,  not  side-cut,  and  strike  a  sharp  blow.  A  chip  flies 
out  of  the  square.  By  repeating  these  two  kinds  of 
cuts,  straight  and  at  an  angle,  alternately  we  can  cut  a 
square  hole  quite  through  the  board.  Such  a  chisel 
hole  is  called  a  mortise.  The  chisel  is  thus  a  mortising 
tool.  We  observe,  also,  in  making  these  splitting-off 


64  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

cuts,  that  we  cut  across  the  grain  and  split  the  wood 
with  the  grain. 

Next,  get  a  smaller  piece  of  board,  three  inches  wide 
and  six  inches  long.  Place  it  upright  in  the  vise  and 
mark  off  one  inch  on  each  side  of  the  end.  Then  cut 
off  each  corner,  leaving  a  square  point  in  the  middle. 
This  center  projection  is  the  tongue  or  tenon,  and  the 
two  side-cuts  are  the  shoulders.  If  the  work  has  been 
truly  done  and  every  measurement  is  exact,  the  tenon 
will  fit  into  the  mortise.  You  have  now  made  a  mortise 
and  tenon  joint.  You  have  done  a  piece  of  joinery.  This 
mortise  and  tenon  joint  may  be  used  in  almost  every  kind 
of  work  where  one  piece  of  wood  is  joined  to  another. 
The  carpenter  uses  this  joint  in  many  ways,  and  for 
this  reason  he  is  sometimes  called  a  joiner.  The  carpen- 
ter, cabinet-maker,  ship-builder,  sash -maker,  carriage- 
maker,  box-maker,  cooper  and  trunk-maker  all  make 
such  joints  as  this.  You  see  what  an  immense  variety 
of  work  can  be  done  with  a  simple  hammer  and  chisel. 
A  series  of  tenons  and  cuts  on  the  edge  of  a  board 
makes  what  is  called  a  dovetail,  and  by  fitting  two 
dovetailed  boards  together  we  make  a  dovetail- joint. 

Noi  only  is  the  chisel  used  in  all  kinds  of  wood- 
working, but  it  is  useful  in  working  stone,  marble  and 
metals.  It  has  many  other  uses  besides  making  joints 
in  wood,  and,  in  the  hands  of  the  wood-carver  and  the 
sculptor,  it  becomes  one  of  the  finest  of  all  the  tools. 
Through  its  use  men  and  women  have  made  the  most 
beautiful  things  we  see  in  our  homes  and  churches,  our 
museums  and  art  galleries.  To  understand  this  splen- 


THE  CHISEL 


65 


did  tool,  let  us  examine  the  different  kinds  of  chisels 
and  then  see  how  they  are  used  by  stone  and  metal- 
workers. 

The  chisels  used  in  woodwork  range  from  the  large, 
heavy  house-builder's  chisel,  two  feet  long,  used  in 
framing  timbers  together,  down  to  the  delicate  little 
chisels,  six  inches 
long,  used  by  the 
wood  -carver  in  cut- 
ting flowers  and 
foliage  upon  a 
newel- post  or  man- 
tel-piece. They 
are  divided  into 
two  classes:  socket 
chisels,  in  which 
the  handle  is  fas- 
tened into  an  open- 
ing or  socket  at  the 
end  of  the  blade,  as 
in  a  joiner's  fram- 
ing-chisel; and 
tang-chisels,  in  which  the  tang,  or  pointed  end  of  the 
blade,  is  fitted  inside  the  handle.  All  the  smaller  chisels 
are  tang-chisels.  A  carpenter  may  use  a  dozen  chisels  all 
exactly  alike,  except  in  size.  He  may  also  use  chisels 
with  blades  of  different  widths  for  doing  large  or  small 
work.  He  gives  names  to  these  according  to  their 
use,  such  as  sash-chisel,  mortise-lock  chisel,  paring- 
chisel,  etc.  For  certain  work  he  may  use  a  chisel 

5 


1.  Tang- 
Gouge 


2.  Tang- 
Chisel 


3.  Framing- 
Socket  Chisel 


4.  Box 

Chisel 


66  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

having  two  narrow  blades  with  a  blank  space  between 
them.  He  may  use  a  chisel  with  an  oblique  cutting- 
edge,  or  one  with  two  blades  placed  at  right  angles, 
and  called  a  corner-chisel.  His  diamond-pointed 
chisel  has  two  bezels,  meeting  at  a  point  in  the 
middle. 

One  class  of  wood-cutting  chisels  has  been  given  a 
special  name.  Where  a  chisel  has  a  hollow  or  round 
blade,  it  is  called  a  gouge.  A  flat  chisel  gives  a  straight 
cut,  and  the  chips  are  flat.  A  gouge  gives  a  hollow 
cut,  and  the  chips  are  curved  or  crescent-shaped.  With 
the  first  the  material  is  chiseled  out,  with  the  second 
the  work  is  called  gouging.  Gouges  have  different 
curves ;  some  are  a  true  half -circle,  some  are  crescent- 
shaped,  and  all  are  made  in  many  different  sizes.  Some 
gouges  have  a  pointed  cutting-edge,  like  the  diamond- 
pointed  chisel. 

Some  chisels  for  cutting  wood  have  two  bezels,  one 
on  each  side  of  the  blade,  as  in  the  gardener's  grafting- 
chisel.  Such  a  double-faced  chisel  is  used  for  splitting 
open  the  limb  of  a  tree,  and  we  shall  find  in  other  work 
that  there  are  many  of  these  splitting-chisels.  Any- 
thing having  two  faces  to  its  cutting-edge,  and  used 
with  a  hammer,  is  said  to  have  a  chisel-edge,  as  the 
gardener's  grafting-knife,  which  is  a  chisel  having  a 
bent  blade  and  two  bezels. 

The  blacksmith,  machinist,  shipwright,  plumber,  and 
jeweler  all  use  chisels.  These  metal-cutting  chisels  are 
of  very  hard  steel,  and  usually  have  no  handles,  the  top 
of  the  blade  acting  as  the  anvil  on  which  the  hammer 


THE  CHISEL  67 

strikes.     Good  examples  of  the  metal- working  chisels 
are  shown  in  the  accompanying  picture. 

The  cold-chisel  has  a  round  or  hexagonal  handle  with 
a  round  head  and  long,  tapering  blade  and  double  bezel. 
It  is  given  the  name  of  cold-chisel  because  it  is  used  to 
cut  or  chip  metals  when  cold.  Iron-castings,  when  they 
come  out  of  the  iron-founder's  molds,  are  usually  rough 
and  uneven,  and  often  are  not  exactly  the  right  shape 
or  size.  The  cold-chisel  is  used  to  smooth  such  cast- 
ings, and  also  brass  and 
other  metal  castings,  or  to 
trim  them  to  exactly  the 
right  shape.  This  work  is 
called  chipping.  The  chisel 
is  held  at  a  slight  angle,  and 
at  every  blow  a  small  metal 
chip  is  cut  off.  Should  you 
go  to  a  technical  school,  one 
of  the  first  lessons  you  would  be  taught  would  be  the 
use  of  a  hammer  and  a  chipping-chisel  in  cutting  metal 
to  pattern,  or  in  reducing  a  rough  surface  to  a  true 
and  even  one.  A  large  clipping-chisel  is  sometimes 
called  a  flogging-chisel. 

Among  the  chisels  used  by  workers  upon  hot  or  cold 
metals  we  shall  find  a  great  variety  of  tools  of  all 
shapes  and  sizes,  according  to  the  work  to  be  done. 
One  of  these  is  the  bolt-chisel,  which  is  a  cold-chisel 
having  a  long  blade  and  narrow  edge,  and  used  for 
cutting  off  bolts  or  any  round  piece  of  metal.  A  cold- 
chisel  with  a  sharp-pointed  edge,  used  for  denting 


68  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

or  marking  metals,  is  called  a  center-chisel.  It  is  used 
to  mark  the  exact  center  of  any  round  pattern  marked 
upon  metal,  such  as  the  mark  where  a  hole  is  to  be  cut 
through  the  metal.  A  cross-cut  chisel  has  a  very  nar- 
row edge,  and  is  used  as  a  cold- chisel  in  making  a 
narrow  groove  or  cross-cut  in  metal  where  a  part  is  to 
be  broken  off. 

This  leads  us  to  a  very  curious  thing  about  cutting 
cast  iron.  If  the  gas-man  or  plumber  wishes  to  cut  an 
iron  pipe,  he  chisels  out  a  shallow  groove  all  round  the 
iron.  It  is  just  as  if  he  cut  the  skin  of  the  iron.  The 
iron  pipe,  after  this  groove  is  cut,  is  so  much  weakened 
that  it  can  be  easily  broken  with  a  hammer,  the  break 
coming  just  where  the  cut  is  made.  Without  the  cut, 
the  pipe  would  break  with  a  ragged  fracture,  and  there 
eould  be  no  certainty  where  the  break  would  come. 
By  means  of  the  groove  cut  with  the  cross-cut  chisel, 
the  pipe  can  be  broken  at  any  place  we  wish,  or  accord- 
ing to  measure.  Sometimes  a  blacksmith  wishes  to  cut 
off  a  rod  of  iron  while  red  hot,  and  he  uses  a  thick, 
short  chisel  on  the  end  of  a  rod,  or  fastened  to  a  long 
wooden  handle,  and  he  calls  it  his  rod-chisel. 

The  chisel  is  useful  in  many  trades.  The  plumber, 
jeweler,  and  machinist,  the  brass  founder  and  railroad 
man  all  use  chisels  suited  to  their  special  work.  Each 
gives  his  tool  names  according  to  its  work,  and  often  to 
his  fancy  and  for  no  particular  reason,  such  as  the 
silversmith's  chasing-chisel,  or  the  shipwright's  mark- 
ing-iron and  calking-chisel,  or  the  blacksmith's  hardy 
and  splitting-chisel. 


THE  CHISEL  69 

The  dentist  uses  a  number  of  very  small  chisels, 
and  often  in  his  tiny  little  forge  hammers  out  a  chisel 
to  suit  this  work,  and  gives  it  a  name  to  suit  his  fancy, 
as  burr-chisel,  triangular  chisel  or  dental  chisel.  The 
ice-man,  harvesting  ice  in  the  winter,  uses  a  number  of 
giant  chisels  as  tall  as  a  man,  to  split  off  the  cakes  of 
ice  floating  on  the  surface  of  the  water.  A  boy  may 
use  an  ice-chisel  to  clean  off  the  sidewalk  after  the 
snow  is  hard,  or  the  cook  may  use  a  chisel  to  chop  off 
a  piece  of  ice  for  the  water-pitcher. 

The  wood-carver  uses  some  of  the  carpenter's  chisels, 
but  nearly  all  of  his  work  is  done  with  small  chisels, 
made  in  a  great  variety  of  shapes  to  fit  the  work  he  has 
to  do. 

In  decorative  work,  like  wood-carving  or  stone-carv- 
ing, or  in  sculpture,  we  discover  that  the  mason, 
sculptor  and  wood-carver  use  the  chisel  a*f  their 
best  and  finest  tool.  So  true  is  this,  that  the  word 
chisel  is  used  to  express  quite  another  matter,  as 
when  we  say  a  beautiful  girl  has  a  finely  chiseled  face. 
We  do  not  mean  that  a  chisel  has  been  used  upon  it, 
but  that  her  face  is  as  finely  molded  as  the  chiseled 
face  of  a  beautiful  statue.  A  sculptor's  work  is  known 
by  the  marks  of  his  chisel,  so  we  sometimes  say  a  good 
workman  is  known  by  his  chisel-marks. 

The  stone-mason  or  stone-carver  uses  about  a  dozen 
chisels  in  his  beautiful  work  of  dressing  and  decorating 
stone.  All  stonework  used  on  the  exterior  walls  of 
buildings  is  " dressed"  or  given  a  fine  finish,  to  shed 
rain  and  dust,  and  stone-dressing  is  largely  done  with 


70  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

chisels.  Sometimes  the  dressing  is  only  along  the  edge 
of  each  stone,  the  center  of  the  block  being  left  un- 
dressed, or  roughly  chiseled  over  to  trim  it  into  shape. 
Carved  stonework  is  a  more  highly  finished  or  deco- 
rated work,  done  with  chisels  on  the  stone.  Many 
buildings  have  dressed  stone  walls  with  carved  stone 
ornaments,  and  if  it  is  the  work  of  a  master  workman, 
we  can  find  his  fine  chisel-marks  over  it  all.  Look  at 
any  stone  building  near  your  home,  and  you  will  soon 
see  with  what  skill  and  care  the  stone-carver  and  stone- 
dresser  use  their  fine  chisels.  Every  cut  tells,  every 
mark  is  true,  exact,  and  beautiful,  and  we  cannot  fail 
to  see  what  a  grand  tool  is  this  plain  little  thing  we 
call  a  chisel. 

When  the  mason,  the  stone-dresser  or  the  sculptor 
begins  work  upon  a  block  of  stone  or  marble,  he  uses  a 
wide-bladed  chisel  called  his  boasting-chisel.  With  this 
he  can  chip  off  the  first  large  flakes  and  chips  of  stone, 
to  bring  it  into  something  like  the  shape  he  wants. 
He  then  uses  a  variety  of  chisels,  some  with  very  sharp 
points,  or  narrow  chisels,  and  chisels  with  two  cutting- 
points,  or  a  flat  chisel  having  a  number  of  sharp  points 
or  teeth,  and  called  a  marteline-chisel.  He  uses  chisels 
with  rounded  edges  notched  with  fine  teeth,  and  many 
others  of  curious  shapes  and  strange  names.  He  uses 
with  all  his  chisels  wooden  mallets  of  various  shapes, 
but  chiefly  a  round-headed  mallet  with  a  short,  straight 
handle. 

The  sculptor  uses  all  the  finer  chisels  of  the  stone- 
mason, and  special  forms  of  chisels  suited  to  the  fine 


THE  CHISEL  Yl 

material  in  which  he  works,  like  the  entering-chisel  or 
spoon  chisel.  The  most  beautiful  things  that  have 
come  down  to  us  from  the  past  are  the  marble  statues 
carved  by  the  great  sculptors  of  ancient  Greece  and 
Kome,  and  all  of  these  grand  pieces  of  work  were  cut 
out  of  the  solid  marble  and  given  their  splendid  forms 
with  a  simple  mallet  and  chisel.  But  then,  simple  as 
were  these  tools,  they  were  in  the  hands  of  master 
workmen.  Men  will  always  respect  their  memory  and 
admire  the  work  of  their  hands.  If  these  men  could 
use  a  chisel  to  such  noble  purpose,  we,  too,  need  not 
be  ashamed  to  use  their  tools.  We  may  never  do  as 
grand  work,  but  it  is  something  that  we  can  learn  to 
use  the  tools  they  used,  something  that  we  can  do  good 
work,  so  that,  perhaps  long  after  we  have  passed  away, 
men  may  see  our. chisel-marks  and  say,  "Here  is  the 
work  of  a  skillful  user  of  tools." 

With  the  invention  of  the  new  pneumatic  hammers 
every  one  asked  if  they  could  be  used  with  a  chisel.  It 
was  soon  shown  that  the  swiftly  moving  power-ham- 
mers could  be  easily  adapted  to  the  use  of  the  stone- 
cutter and  sculptor.  It  was  necessary  only  to  affix  a 
chisel-point  to  the  piston-rod  of  the  little  motor,  and 
the  tool  was  changed  from  a  power-hammer  to  a  power- 
chisel,  and  the  sculptor  had  a  new  and  wonderful  tool 
that  gave  him  an  entirely  new  method  of  carving 
marble.  With  a  chisel  and  mallet  he  could  strike  thirty 
blows  a  minute ;  with  the  new  tool  he  could  strike  a 
thousand  a  minute. 

All  the  labor  of  striking  the  blow  was  performed  by 


72 


TOOLS 


MACHINES 


the  flying  piston-rod.  The  sculptor's  hand  and  mind 
were  released  from  all  the  labor  and  thought  given  to 
the  work  of  striking  the  chisel.  He  could  now  give 
his  entire  attention  to  the  business  of  guiding  his  chisel 
to  the  work.  With  a  mallet  he  slowly  chipped  off  one 

flake  of  the  stone 
at  a  time.  With 
the  pneumatic  tool 
his  chisel  cut  aAvay 
a  very  small  piece 
at  each  blow,  the 
little  grains  falling 
in  a  dusty  shower 
from  the  chisel- 
point.  The  gain 
in  time  and  labor 
is  so  great  that  to- 
day we  find  pneu- 
matic tools,  hav- 
ing many  different 
styles  of  chisels, 
used  in  marble  and 
stone-yards,  and 
in  sculptors'  studios.  The  different  chisel-points  are 
easily  affixed  to  the  piston-rod,  and  the  workman  can 
use  the  same  motor  for  many  kinds  of  work.  These 
pneumatic  tools  are  used  also  in  all  kinds  of  metal  cut- 
ting, chipping  and  shaping,  or  dressing.  They  range 
in  size  from  small  motors  for  the  use  of  marble- workers 
to  large  and  powerful  motors  used  in  shipyards  and 


Pneumatic  Chisel 


THE  CHISEL  73 

bridge  and  boiler-shops.  The  pneumatic  chiseling-tools 
are  justly  regarded  as  the  most  important  power-tools 
recently  invented,  and  as  they  have  a  wide  field  of  use- 
fulness before  them,  we  shall  find  it  well  worth  our 
while  to  endeavor  to  understand  their  construction  and 
their  use  in  the  arts.  One  of  these  grand  new  tools 
used  in  chiseling  iron  is  shown  in  the  accompanying 
picture. 


CHAPTEK  YI 

EDGE-TOOLS 

SOMETIMES  the  carpenter  or  wood-carver  may  use  the 
gouge  without  a  hammer.  Holding  it  in  his  hands,  he 
may  push  or  slide  the  point  of  the  blade  over  the  wood 
and  plow  out  a  long,  shallow  groove.  With  hammer 
and  gouge  he  strikes  out  chips.  With  the  gouge  used 
in  this  way  he  plows  up  a  long,  slender  shaving.  When 
we  examined  the  drawing-knife  we  saw  that  it  is  used 
with  a  swift,  sliding  motion  over  the  wood  in  cutting 
a  long,  slender,  curling  shaving.  The  spoke-shave  is  a 
drawing-knife  in  which  the  cutting  blade  is  fixed  in 
a  frame  or  carrier.  This  carrier  holds  the  blade  in  a 
fixed  position,  and  as  it  slides  over  the  wood  it  causes 
the  blade  to  make  an  even,  uniform  cut.  This  idea  of 
placing  the  cutting-tool  in  a  sliding  carriage  brings  us 
to  another  and  most  interesting  class  of  tools.  The 
ancient  Roman  carpenters  understood  this  idea  of  plac- 
ing a  knife  in  a  carrier,  and  had  a  tool  they  called  a 
runcina.  Could  we  see  a  picture  of  a  Roman  runcina 
we  should  recognize  it  as  a  plane. 

A  plane  is  a  tool  having  a  sliding  carriage  and  carry- 
ing a  broad-bladed  chisel.  The  carriage  part  is  called 
the  stock,  and  it  has  a  smooth  bottom  that  is  called  the 


EDGE-TOOLS  ft) 

sole.  On  the  upper  side  of  the  stock  is  sometimes 
placed  a  handle  whereby  it  may  be  pushed  or  slid  along 
over  the  material  to  be  planed.  This  handle  is  sometimes 
called  the  toat.  The  word  handle  is,  however,  better, 
because  some  planes  have  two  handles,  and  in  some 
planes  they  resemble  the  handle  of  a  saw.  In  the  stock 
is  an  opening,  wide  at  the  top  and  extending  through 
the  stock  to  the  sole,  where  it  is  reduced  to  a  narrow 
slot.  In  this  opening  is  fixed  the  cutting-tool,  carried 
by  the  stock,  the  cutting-edge  projecting  slightly  below 
the  sole.  The  cutting-tool  is  called  the  bit,  or  iron, 
or,  sometimes,  the  plane-iron. 

Place  a  piece  of  board  upon  the  workbench,  pushing 
one  end  against  the  little  piece  of  iron  set  in  the  top  of  the 
bench,  and  called  the  stop.  This  will  prevent  the  board 
from  sliding  on  the  bench  when  we  use  a  plane  upon  it. 
Place  a  plane  upon  the  board  and  strike  the  end  with  a 
hammer.  Next,  holding  it  by  the  right  hand  (by  the  han- 
dle), push  it  slowly  along  the  board.  Nothing  happens. 
It  is  clear  that  the  plane  is  not  a  tool  to  be  used  with 
a  sudden  blow  or  by  sustained  pressure.  Now,  standing 
by  the  bench  and  facing  the  stop,  press  upon  the  plane 
and  give  it  a  smart,  quick  push.  It  at  once  slides  easily 
along  the  board,  and  out  of  the  opening  of  the  stock 
curls  a  long,  thin  shaving.  We  see  that  the  plane  is 
a  tool  in  which  speed  or  time  is  an  important  element 
of  the  work.  There  must  be  pressure,  with  a  rapid, 
forward  motion.  We  examine  the  wood  and  find  that 
the  plane  has  left  a  smooth  path  on  the  surface.  The 
plane  makes  smooth.  It  is  a  surfacing-tool. 


76  TOOLS  A^*J  MACHINES 

With  a  chisel  and  hammer  we  can  make  a  mortise 
and  tenon- joint,  a  dovetail- joint,  or  we  can  shape  wood 
into  many  useful  and  beautiful  forms.  With  the  plane 
we  can  make  rough  wood  true,  smooth  and  beautiful. 
The  name  plane,  perhaps,  comes  from  the  work  it  does, 
for  it  is  used  to  smooth  or  reduce  wood  to  a  true  plane. 
Chisel  and  plane  are  useful  each  in  its  own  way,  and 
our  best  plan  is  to  use  both  tools  with  care  and  skill, 
knowing  well  that  even  a  smooth,  true  surface  is  both 
useful  and  beautiful. 

The  carpenter,  cabinet-maker  and  cooper  use  many 
different  kinds  of  planes  in  their  work,  each  one  with 
its  special  trade  name.  Some  of  these  names  describe 
the  work  designed  to  be  done  by  the  plane,  as  smooth- 
ing-plane,  sash-plane,  edge-plane,  hand-rail  plane,  and 
panel-plane.  The  other  names  are  often  local,  or 
known  only  in  one  country  or  one  part  of  one  country. 
All  are,  however,  known  in  a  general  way  as  wood- 
working planes.  The  house  carpenter  uses  a  number 
of  planes  of  different  sizes,  and  employs  each  in  special 
work.  Among  these  are  the  jack-plane,  long-plane, 
fore-plane,  try-plane,  etc.  In  bringing  a  rough  board  to 
a  fine  surface  he  uses  first  the  jack,  then  the  try,  panel 
and  smoothing-plane,  in  this  order.  His  planes  cut  a 
path  varying  from  three-fourths  of  an  inch  to  three 
and  a  half  inches  wide. 

The  carpenter  sometimes  wishes  to  make  a  tight 
joint  between  two  boards.  To  do  this  he  makes  a 
groove  in  the  edge  of  one  board  and  a  continuous 
tongue  upon  the  edge  of  the  next  board.  The  two 


EDGE-TOOLS 


Side-plane 


boards  can  then  be  joined  together  to  make  what  is 
called  a  matched,  or  tongue  and  groove  joint,  and  when 
put  together  in  this  way  such  boards  are  called  matched 
boards.  To  do  this  work 
he  uses  a  tonguing-plane 
and  a  grooving-plane. 
The  first  has  two  bits, 
side  by  side,  with  a  blank 
space  in  the  stock  be- 
tween them.  Such  a 
plane  used  on  the  edge 
of  a  board  cuts  two  shoulders  on  the  edge  of  the 
board,  leaving  the  raised  tongue  between  them.  The 
grooving-plane  is  the  reverse  of  this,  and  plows  out  of 

the  edge  of  the  board 
a  central  groove  that 
will  just  fit  over  one 
of  these  tongues. 

The  cabinet-maker, 
stair-builder  and  deco- 
rative woodworker  use 
still  other  planes  called 
fluting,  fillet,  ogee,  as- 
tregal,  hand-rail  and 
ovolo  or  quarter-round 
planes.  These  names 
describe  the  sole  of 

Circular  and  Core-box  Planes 

the  plane  and  the 

edge  of  the  bit,  and  the  tool  cuts  the  wood  into  these 
various  shapes.     A  double  rounded  sole  gives  a  double 


78  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

curved,  or  ogee  shape,  and  a  curved-sole-plane  will 
cut  a  strip  of  wood  into  the  rounded  form  of  the 
hand-railing  of  a  stairway.  In  some  planes  the  bit  and 
the  opening  are  placed  at  the  side  of  the  stock,  the  sole 
being  blank.  Such  planes  are  called  side-planes,  and 
are  useful  in  planing  in  corners  where  it  would  be 
difficult  to  use  an  ordinary  plane.  Some  planes  have 
narrow  soles  and  bits  for  making  deep  grooves.  They 
are  often  called  plows.  In  sash-making,  when  a  shoul- 
der or  rabbet  is  to  be  formed  on  a  sash-bar,  a  rabbet- 
plane  is  used.  Others  have  wide  soles,  and  are  used  to 
cut  thin,  wide  splints  or  veneers  from  wood.  In  one 
form  of  plane  the  bit  is  placed  upright  in  the  stock,  and 
its  edge  is  notched  or  serrated  or  cut  into  sharp  joints. 
Such  planes  are  called  scratching,  marking  or  scraping- 
planes.  In  addition  to 
the  ordinary  ivooden 
stock  planes  there  are 

many  iron  planes,  some  Universa|  Hand-Beader 

having  thin,  flexible  steel 

soles  for  working  in  curved  corners.     They  are  called 
circular  planes. 

The  many  intricate  decorations  designed  by  the 
ancient  Greek  and  Roman  architects,  and  cut  in  stone 
by  their  builders  and  stone  decorators,  naturally  sug- 
gested to  our  own  house-builders  many  beautiful  de- 
signs to  be  reproduced  in  wood.  We  can  see  examples 
of  this  work  in  old  colonial  houses.  The  desire  to  re- 
produce in  wood  these  old  stone  ornaments  led  to  the 
invention  of  a  great  number  of  plane-bits,  and  the 


EDGE-TOOLS  79 

use  of  these  bits  naturally  inspired  our  tool-makers  to 
devise  a  plane  in  which  many  different  bits  could  be 
employed.  Such  universal  planes  are  exceedingly  in- 
genious, and  well 
worth  careful  study. 
One,  figured  in  the  ac- 
companying illustra- 
tion, will  plane  wood 
into  fifty-two  differ- 
ent forms  by  simply 

•f         ,  Universal  Plane 

changing  the  bits. 

All  the  beautiful  decorative  work  we  see  in  colonial 
houses  was  done  with  chisels  and  planes,  and  while  we 
must  admire  its  beauty,  we  can  see  that  such  fine  hand- 
work must  have  taken  a  great  deal  of  time  and  labor. 
There  is  much  fine  hand- work  done  now,  but  the  cost 
of  labor  is  to-day  so  high,  and  hand- work  demands  such 
high  pay,  that  we  now  use  other  methods  and  other 
tools.  At  the  planing  and  molding-mill  we  shall  find 
many  fine  machine-tools  that  reproduce  in  wood  all  the 
beautiful  planed  work  once  done  by  hand.  These 
wood- working  machines  have  made  it  possible  to  deco- 
rate even  the  smallest  and  cheapest  houses  with  perfect 
copies  of  the  planed  moldings,  railings,  window-cas- 
ings and  panels  of  the  old  colonial  mansions.  These 
machines  are  described  in  the  next  chapter. 

Every  trade  using  wood  employs  planes  of  some 
form,  so  we  find  the  cooper  using  a  plane,  called  a 
jointer,  having  a  very  long  stock.  The  sole  is  on  the 
upper  side,  the  plane  being  held  in  a  fixed  position  and 


~80  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

the  wood  drawn  over  the  edge  of  the  bit.  He  uses  also 
other  planes  that  he  calls  his  whisk,  his  ho  well  and  his 
over- shave.  In  city  skating  parks  and  on  frozen  rivers 
where  ice  is  being  harvested,  large  planes,  drawn  by 
horses,  are  used  to  plane  natural  ice  down  to  a  clean 
smooth  surface  fit  for  skating  or  harvesting.  They 
are  called  snow-ice  planes.  The  confectioner  also  uses 
a  small  hand-tool,  called  an  ice-plane,  in  shaving  ice 
for  cooling  a  glass  of  soda  water. 

In  all  ordinary  work  we  may  wish  to  do  upon  our 
home  bench  three  or  four  simple  planes  will  answer  all 
practical  purposes,  and  our  best  plan  is  to  leave  their 
selection  to  the  dealer  at  the  hardware  store.  Using 
a  plane  is  a  capital  exercise,  and  we  may  all  be  glad  to 
learn  this  simple  accomplishment  of  planing.  To  use 
a  plane  means  that  we  wish  to  give  to  whatever  work  we 
do  a  smooth,  true,  and  handsome  finish.  A  plane 
teaches  us  the  value  of  fine,  accurate  work,  teaches  us 
neatness,  and  sho\vs  us  that  even  so  simple  a  thing  as 
a  wooden  box  may  have  a  real  beauty  of  its  own. 

We  have  seen  that  the  knife  may  have  suggested  the 
chisel,  and  the  chisel  may  have  led  to  the  invention  of 
the  plane.  In  the  same  way  we  can  easily  imagine 
that  a  knife  with  a  long  handle  may  have  led  to  the 
invention  of  that  fine  old  tool,  the  ax,  and  its  little 
brother,  the  hatchet. 

The  hatchet  must  be  a  very  old  tool,  for  stone 
hatchets  have  been  found  in  the  graves  of  the  oldest 
men  of  whom  we  have  any  trace.  These  ancient  men, 
whose  very  names  are  lost,  had  not  learned  the  use  of 


EDGE-TOOLS  81 

metals,  and  they  laboriously  cut  their  heavy  and  clumsy 
hatchets  out  of  hard  stone.  It  was  this  use  of  stone- 
bladed  tools  that  led  the  students  of  these  old  peoples 
to  call  them  the  Stone  Age  men,  or  the  men  who  used 
stone  tools.  The  Stone  Age  men  evidently  tied  the 
blade  to  the  helve  with  cords,  for  we  can  still  see  the 
groove  cut  in  the  stone  for  the  cords.  Even  after  men 
learned  to  make  iron  hatchets,  they  still  tied  the  blade 
to  the  helve,  and  it  seems  to  have  been  a  very  long 
time  before  any  one  thought  of  mak- 
ing a  hole  or  socket  in  the  blade  and 
fitting  the  helve  in  the  socket. 

The  North  American  Indians  had 
a  rude  kind  of  stone  hatchet,  and 
when  white  men  came  in  their  ships 
the  Indians  were  glad  to  buy  iron 
hatchets  of  the  traders.  They  did 
not  wish  the  hatchets  as  tools,  but  as 
weapons  in  their  wars,  and  as  the 

A  Prehistoric  Ax 

metal  hatchets  were  far  better  than 
their  own  stone  hatchets,  they  eagerly  exchanged  furs 
and  tobacco  for  the  white  man's  tools.  They  called 
their  stone  hatchet  a  tomahawk,  and  it  was  really 
only  a  war  hatchet.  At  the  top  of  the  blade  of  the 
tomahawk  was  (in  place  of  our  hammer)  a  hollow  pipe- 
bowl,  the  handle  being  holloAV,  and  serving  as  a  pipe- 
stem  so  that  they  could  use  the  tomahawk  to  smoke 
tobacco  or  kill  their  enemies.  They  had  a  curious  cus- 
tom of  burying  one  of  these  tomahawks  in  the  ground 
at  the  end  of  one  of  their  little  wars,  and  cheerfully 


82 


TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 


digging  it  up  again  the  next  time  they  started  out  on 
the  warpath.  It  was  from  this  our  expression  "  to 
bury  the  hatchet  "  or  to  have  peace,  came. 

The  best  tool  for  a  study  of  the  ax  and  hatchet  is  the 
carpenter's  shingling-hatchet.  It  has  a  large  flat  blade 
with  a  straight  edge.  At  the  back  is  a  peen  or  ham- 
mer-head, and  in  the 
middle  is  a  socket  for 
the  handle  or  helve, 
the  blade  and  helve  be- 
ing in  one  line.  We 
see  that  it  is  a  com- 
bined knife  and  ham- 
mer with  the  same 
helve.  We  s.ee  also 
that  on  the  side  of  the 
blade  there  is  a  small 
notch,  and  this  enables 
us  to  use  the  tool  as 
a  claw  in  pulling  a 
nail.  This  idea  of 
making  a  tool  that  can 
be  used  to  do  three  dif- 
ferent pieces  of  work  in  the  same  trade  has  been  carried 
to  great  perfection  by  our  American  tool-makers.  Time 
and  labor  are  so  costly  that  we  cannot  expect  a  man  to 
carry  to  the  roof  three  tools,  one  to  split  or  shave  a  shin- 
gle to  the  right  width,  another  to  drive  a  nail,  and  still 
another  to  pull  out  a  nail  when  put  in  the  wrong  place, 
and  this  shingling-hatchet  combines  all  three  in  one. 


Lather's  Hatchet 


EDGE-TOOLS  83 

The  hatchet,  like  a  knife,  is  a  handy  tool  for  the 
workroom.  It  is  useful  in  sharpening  a  stake  for  a 
tennis  net,  or  in  making  a  pin  for  a  tent.  The  city  boy 
uses  a  hatchet  for  roughly  shaping  wood  ready  for  the 
knife,  and  for  various  pieces  of  work  at  the  bench. 
For  the  country  boy  the  hatchet  is,  next  to  the  knife, 
the  most  useful  thing  any  young  man  can  own.  With 
a  hatchet  he  can  cut  down  small  trees  for  a  camp  in 
the  woods,  make  stakes  and  pins  of  all  kinds,  chop 
wood  for  the  camp-fire  and  for  his  mother's  cook- 
stove.  With  his  hatchet  he  is  ready  for  fun  in  the 
woods  or  for  good  solid  work  in  the  barn  or  at  the 
sugar-camp.  It  is  his  all-around  tool,  useful  every  day 
in  the  year.  There  have  been  boys  who  did  not  like 
.chopping  kindlings  in  the  woodshed  on  baking  day. 
They  would  prefer  to  go  fishing.  Such  boys  never 
really  understand  the  connection  between  pies  and  a 
hatchet.  They  are  ready  to  eat  mother's  pies,  but  un- 
willing to  swing  a  hatchet  at  mother's  woodpile.  This 
shows  what  curious  ideas  a  boy  may  have  concerning 
this  fine  tool  we  call  a  hatchet. 

Hatchets  are  used  for  many  purposes.  The  man 
putting  on  laths  in  a  new  house  uses  a  hatchet  with 
a  narrow  blade  and  a  straight  hammer-head  having  a 
rough  face.  The  carpenter  may  have  a  hatchet  having 
claws  at  the  side  of  the  hammer,  or  a  broad  hatchet 
with  a  wide  blade  and  a  short  head  or  poll.  A  hunter's 
hatchet  is  a  little  hand-ax.  A  cooper  uses  a  hatchet 
having  a  curved  cutting  edge.  An  iceman's  hatchet 
has  a  narrow  blade  with  rounded  edge  and  a  sharp 


84:  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

pick  or  point  for  moving  blocks  of  ice.  A  bricklayer's 
hatchet  has  a  heavy  head  Avith  a  square  hammer-face, 
and  a  blade  with  curved  sides  and  a  straight,  but  dull 
edge.  It  is  used  to  cut  bricks  and  to  tap  them  into 
place  in  the  wall.  Another  style  is  more  like  a  paver's 
hammer;  the  handle  is  long  and  the  top  is  like  a  chisel. 
Of  all  the  edge-tools,  the  American  ax  is  perhaps  the 
finest  hand-tool  in  the  world.  Next  to  the  hammer,  it 
is  the  most  common  tool  to  be  found  in  this  country. 
This  is  a  land  of  forests.  The  very  first  thing  the 
colonist  was  obliged  to  do  was  to  build  a  log  house. 
The  Pilgrims  in  Massachusetts  Bay,  the  Dutch  in  New 
York,  the  Spanish  and  French  in  Florida  and  Canada 
could  all  use  an  ax.  Each  began  his  settlement  by  fell- 
ing trees.  So,  from  the  very  start,  the  American  has 
been  a  woodman,  and  the  American  lumberman  is  the 
finest  ax-man  in  the  world.  Naturally  he  wants  the 
finest  tool.  The  American  ax  has  a  large  blade  gently 
tapering  to  the  cutting  edge.  The  edge  is  slightly 
rounded,  the  front  being  a  trifle  longer  than  the  back. 
The  head,  or  poll,  is  short,  with  a  slightly  rounded 
face.  The  helve  is  fitted  to  the  eye  with  a  wedge,  and 
is  beautifully  curved,  and  has  a  slight  projection  at  the 
end  to  prevent  the  hand  from  slipping.  Altogether,  it 
is  a  graceful  and  handsome  tool,  worthy  of  the  master- 
hand  that  uses  it.  Every  lumberman  seems  to  prefer 
a  special  kind  of  blade  for  his  particular  work.  The 
Maine  woodman  wants  one  style,  the  Ohio  man  an- 
other, the  Michigan  man  still  another,  the  Kentucky 
man  wants  his  own  ax,  and  the  Georgia  man  in  the 


EDGE-TOOLS  85 

piney  woods,  and  the  turpentine  gatherer,  each  wants 
a  particular  ax  suited  to  his  work.  The  swamp  lum- 
berman wants  a  double -bladed  ax,  and  many  others 
prefer  a  double  ax  for  their  work,  wherever  it  may  be. 
In  peeling  bark  for  the  tanner  the  woodman  calls  for 
a  double  ax  with  a  broad,  gently  rounded  blade.  There 
is  even  a  special  ax  for  young  lumbermen,  called  the 
boy's  ax. 

The  finest  piece  of  woodcraft  to  be  seen  in  the  world 
is  the  felling  of  a  great  tree  by  two  expert  lumbermen. 
The  two  men  stand  on  opposite  sides  of  the  giant  stem 
and  strike  alternate  blows,  swinging  their  gleaming 
axes  in  their  arms  with  a  freedom  of  motion  that  puts 
the  trained  athlete  to  shame.  The  blows  ring  quick 
and  fast,  the  chips  skim  through  the  air  as  if  shot  out 
of  the  tree.  At  last,  the  towering  giant  quivers  and 
bends,  and  then  with  a  terrific  crash  falls  to  thaground 
just  where  the  ax-men  decided  it  should  fall.  Old 
woodmen  used  often  to  chop  a  dozen  trees  till  they 
were  just  ready  to  fall.  Then,  skillfully  chopping  one 
tree,  they  caused  it  to  fall  against  the  others,  and  all 
went  down  in  one  prolonged  and  thundering  uproar 
that  startled  every  wild  beast  for  miles  through  the 
woods  and  sent  the  eagles  screaming  and  wheeling 
through  the  air. 

The  trees  once  felled,  the  woodman  takes  another  ax 
to  trim  the  great  logs  into  convenient  length  and  shape. 
For  such  work  he  uses  a  broad-ax.  The  New  England 
woodman  and  ship-builder  use  a  broad-ax  with  a  wide 
blade  that  is  gently  rounded  on  the  edge.  The  Cana- 


86  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

dian,  the  western  and  the  southern  man  use  broad-axes 
having  very  wide  blades  with  a  straight  edge.  In  all 
these  axes,  whatever  their  names,  experience  seems  to 
show  that  each  is  exactly  adapted  to  its  work  and  the 
kind  of  tree  on  which  it  is  used. 

In  the  railroad  cars  you  will  often  see,  enclosed  in  a 
glass  case,  a  number  of  tools.  These  are  wrecking-tools, 
to  be  used  in  case  of  an  accident  on  the  road.  Among 
these  tools  is  a  fine  ax  with  a  narrow  blade.  In  place 
of  a  poll,  it  has  a  sharp  pick.  This  is  the  fireman's  ax, 
one  of  the  most  useful  tools  ever 
made.  The  iceman  uses  an  ax  to 
divide  his  ice  blocks,  and  in  han- 
dling the  blocks  that  are  too  large 
to  lift  in  his  tongs.  It  has  a  long, 
narrow,  wedge-shaped  blade  re- 
sembling a  chisel,  and  a  pick  at 
the  head  of  the  blade. 

Type  of  Adz 

Before  the  days  of  sawmills  the 

lumberman,  the  house-builder  and  the  carpenter  made 
the  posts  and  beams  of  a  house  by  cutting  them  out  of 
logs.  The  log-house  can  be  built  with  an  ax.  In 
building  a  frame-house  the  old  builders  had  a  tool 
resembling  an  ax  and  called  an  adz.  This  is  a  wood- 
cutting tool  with  a  curved  blade  and  a  straight  cut- 
ting-edge, with  a  bezel  like  a  chisel.  The  helve  is 
fitted  to  the  eye  at  a  right  angle  with  the  blade,  and 
there  is  a  poll  or  head  at  the  top  of  the  blade.  It  is 
used  in  squaring  a  log  by  standing  on  the  log  and 
swinging  the  adz  in  both  hands  between  the  feet. 


EDGE-TOOLS  87 

With  a  good  adz  the  adz-man  can  cut  from  a  round  log 
a  square  beam  with  smooth,  straight  sides. 

Old  Henry  Hudson,  in  exploring  the  Hudson  Eiver 
in  1609,  sent  his  ship-carpenter  ashore  near  the  Catskills 
to  get  a  new  boom  for  the  good  ship  "Half  Moon," 
and,  no  doubt,  the  carpenter  used  an  adz  in  shaping 
the  boom.  The  builders  of  old  colonial  houses  were 
famous  adz-men,  and  we  can  still  see  the  marks  of  the 
adz  on  the  floors  and  beams  of  old  New  England  houses. 
The  adz  is  a  very  old  tool,  for  we  know  it  was  used  by 
the  ancient  Egyptians,  though  at  that  time  it  was 
smaller  than  our  tools.  The  colonists  also  had  a  short- 
handled  adz. 

The  ship-carpenter  uses  an  adz  in  shaping  the  ship's 
ribs  and  knees.  His  adz  has  a  long,  narrow  poll  and 
a  straight  blade,  though  for  some  work  he  uses  an  adz 
with  a  hollow  blade  resembling  a  gouge. 

The  stone-ax  is  a  small  ax  with  double  blades  and  a 
straight  handle.  Another  style  of  stone-ax  is  called 
the  cavil  or  jedding  ax.  The  slate-roofer  uses  a  small 
ax  with  a  narrow  blade  and  having  a  sharp  spike  at 
the  head  with  which  to  make  the  nail  holes  in  the 
slates.  The  butcher  uses  an  ax  with  a  very  long  sharp 
blade,  called  a  cleaver.  The  gardener  uses  an  ax  hav- 
ing a  curved  blade  with  a  long  cutting-edge  and  a  sharp 
point.  It  has  one,  and  sometimes  two,  sockets  at  the 
back  for  a  long  handle,  and  is  called  a  bush-hook. 
Sometimes  the  long  blade  has  a  slightly  hooked  cutting- 
edge  and  a  socket  for  the  long  handle  at  the  end  of  the 
blade.  Such  cutting-tools  are  called  bill-hooks  and, 


88  TuuLo  AND  MACHINES 

like  the  bush-hooks,  are  used  in  trimming  trees,  shrubs 
and  hedges.  The  farmer  also  uses  long-bladed,  short- 
handled  cutters  called  corn-knives  and  hedge-knives,  or 
hedge-trimmers.  The  farmer  uses  another  ax  in  grub- 
bing up  and  cutting  off  the  roots  of  trees,  called  a  mat- 
tock. It  has  a  narrow  blade  like  an  adz,  but  in  place 
of  the  poll  it  has  a  narrow  ax-blade  and  sometimes  a 
point  like  a  fireman's  ax.  A  railroad  man  uses  a  nar- 
row adz  with  a  long,  sharp  pick.  A  pick  is  not  an  ax, 
but  a  double-pointed  tool  with  a  straight  handle,  used 

to  pick  up  or  loosen  the 
ground.  It  is  like  a  double- 
pointed  mattock. 

In   old   wars,  before   the 

Pick  Mattock 

invention    of   firearms,    the 

fighting  men  used  an  ax  as  a  weapon.  Even  the  Stone 
Age  man  had  his  rude  battle-ax.  A  long-handled  war- 
ax  was  called  a  pole-ax  or  halberd.  Another,  having 
two  blades  and  a  spear  point  at  the  end  of  the  handle, 
was  used  by  soldiers,  but  all  these  war-axes  quickly 
disappeared  the  moment  men  learned  to  use  a  gun. 

We  now  come  to  another  very  large  class  of  edge- 
tools,  in  which  the  cutting-blade  is  fixed  to  a  pivot. 
We  do  not  know  where  or  when  men  first  learned  that, 
if  a  knife-blade  is  fastened  at  one  end  to  a  pin  on  which 
it  can  freely  turn  as  on  pivot,  we  have  a  cutting-tool 
that  will  act  as  a  lever.  The  household  meat  and 
potato-slicer  and  the  cigar-dealer's  tobacco-cutter  are 
examples  of  such  pivoted  knives.  On  the  farm  we  may 
see  this  idea  of  a  pivoted  knife-blade  applied  to  the  cut- 


EDGE-TOOLS  89 

ting  of  hay  and  cornstalks  in  the  lever  feed-cutter. 
From  the  invention  of  the  pivoted  knife  it  was  only  a 
short  step  to  the  invention  of  the  double-bladed  pivoted 
knives. 

Lay  a  visiting-card  on  the  bench  and  with  your  knife 
try  to  cut  it  into  two  pieces  by  pressing  the  knife-blade 
down  upon  it.  It  is  not  easy  to  cut  it  in  this  way, 
because  the  whole  of  the  cutting-edge  of  the  blade  is 
used  at  once.  There  is  another  and  better  tool  for 
such  work,  called  a  pair  of  scissors.  Hold  the  card  in 
the  left  hand  and  the  scissors  in  the  right.  We  see  that 
we  now  have  a  double  acting  pivoted  cutting-tool,  and 
we  observe,  in  using  it,  that  the  blades  do  not  press 
upon  the  card  through  their  whole  length.  The  card 
is  separated  with  a  moving  or  progressive  cut.  We 
say  the  pivoted  blades  give  a  shearing  cut.  This  pro- 
gressive or  shearing  cut  enables  us  to  do  work  that 
would  not  be  possible  with  a  single-bladed  cutting-tool, 
and  we  shall  find  the  principle  of  the  shearing  cut  ap- 
plied to  a  great  number  of  cutting-machines. 

The  ancient  men  who  first  used  a  clam  shell  or  a 
flake  of  obsidian  as  a  knife  had  no  idea  of  a  double- 
bladed  knife.  They  could  not  imagine  how  a  pair  of 
scissors  would  work.  Double  cutting-tools  or  shears 
were  not  invented  until  long  after  the  men  who  used 
stone  knives  had  disappeared.  The  earliest  shears  of 
which  we  have  any  trace  were  simply  two  iron  knives 
joined  together  at  one  end  by  a  spring  formed  of  a 
strip  of  elastic  metal.  Such  a  tool  was  held  in  the 
hand  and  the  blades  pinched  together.  They  were 


90 


TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 


Manicure  Scissors 


first  used  in  clipping  the  wool  from  the  backs  of  sheep, 
and  were  called  sheep-shearing  tools,  or  simply  shears. 
Before  their  invention  all  the  wool  was  cut  off  with  rude 
stone  or  flint  knives.  As  the  knife  would  cut  only  one 

little  flock  of  wool  at  one 
stroke,  the  shears  must  have 
seemed  to  be  a  truly  won- 
derful improvement.  Ko 
doubt,  even  the  sheep 
thought  the  shears  were 
better  than  the  terrible  dull 
stone  knives. 

The  invention  of  scissors 
came  long  after  the  invention  of  shears,  and  they  were 
no  doubt  welcomed  as  a  very  great  improvement  over 
the  older  tools.  At  first  scissors  seem  to  have  been 
small,  awkward  things,  with  straight  blades  and  han- 
dles. Now  they  are  made  in  many  different  styles, 
shapes  and  sizes,  and  are 
adapted  to  a  great  variety 
of  uses.  Some  have  bent 
blades,  others  curved  or 
bent  handles,  some  are 
long,  some  very  thick  and 
short,  some  have  rings 
for  the  fingers  or  thumb. 
The  newspaper  man  may  use  a  pair  twelve  inches  long, 
and  the  dressmaker  or  the  salesman  at  the  ribbon 
counters  may  use  a  pair  that  will  slip  into  the  pocket. 
The  surgeon  has  a  number  of  very  fine  scissors  for  his 


Pruning-shears 


EDGE-TOOLS  91 

delicate  work.  The  button-hole  maker  uses  a  pair  of 
scissors  with  a  blank  in  the  blade  to  prevent  cutting 
through  the  edge  of  the  cloth.  The  florist  and  gar- 
dener use  scissors  with  a  curved  blade  for  pruning, 
and  a  delicate  pair  for  gathering  flowers,  and  large 
shears,  called  pruning- 
shears,  for  trimming 
hedge  plants. 

Before  the  introduc- 

Tinsmith  s  Shears 

tion  of  gas  careful  house- 
keepers used  a  curious  pair  of  scissors,  called  snuffers, 
to  trim  the  wicks  of  candles.  These  snuffing-scissors 
had  a  tiny  box  on  one  blade  and  a  cover  on  the  other, 
so  that  when  the  blades  cut  off  the  burned  wick,  the 
black  bit  of  charred  wicking  was  pushed  into  the  box 
and  prevented  from  falling  on  the  clean  table-cloth. 
Such  snuffers  were  often  made  of  silver,  and  were  kept 
on  a  silver  tray  on  the  parlor  mantel.  Snuffers  are 
sometimes  used  in  country  houses  to  trim  the  wicks  of 
lamps. 

Large  scissors,  such  as  we  see  the  tailor  use,  are  called 

shears,  though  ordinary 
clipping  sheep-shears 
are  not  in  any  sense  a 
pair  of  scissors.  These 

Sheep-shearing  Shears  A 

simple  shears  have  no 

pivot  on  which  the  blades  turn,  though  all  the  large 
shears  used  in  cutting  heavy  cloth,  paper  and  metals 
are  really  scissors.  For  convenience  we  call  the  tin- 
man's great  cutters  shears  and  his  smaller  hand-tools 


TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 


snips.  A  bench-shears  is  a  tool  with  two  short,  stout 
blades  and  very  long  handles,  one  of  them  being  fitted 
with  a  point  to  hold  the  shears  firm  on  the  bench. 

A  little  observation  will  show  us  that  the  principle 
of  the  shearing  cut  has  been  applied  to  a  great  variety 

of  cutting- tools.  In 
the  kitchen  we  can 
see  that  the  slaw- 
cutter  and  potato- 
slicer  is  like  an  in- 
verted plane  with 
the  sole  uppermost. 
The  cutting-blades 
are  set  in  the  wood 
at  an  angle,  or  skew, 
and  on  drawing  a 
cabbage  over  the 
blades  it  is  cut  into 
thin  strips  with  a 
shearing  cut.  The 
old  meat-choppers, 
using  a  blade  resem- 
bling the  common  hand  meat-chopper  and  operated 
by  machine,  have  been  recently  supplanted  by  the 
new  meat-choppers  having  revolving  knives  with  a 
shearing  cut.  Some  of  the  new  cutters  are  very  handy 
tools  in  every  kitchen  where  the  cook  wishes  to  make 
cracker  crumbs,  or  to  dice  carrots  for  soups,  or  prepare 
meats  for  Hamburg  steak  or  for  hash.  All  the  many 
forms  of  apple  and  potato-parers  and  slicers  employed 


Wood-cutting  Tool 


EDGE-TOOLS 


93 


in  kitchens  and  canneries  use  knives,  either  fixed  or 
revolving,  with  a  shearing  cut. 

At  the  shops  of  the  printers  and  book-binders  we 
may  see  powerful  machines  for  cutting  paper.     An- 


Hydraulic  Shear  for  Cutting  Metal 

other  powerful  cutting-tool  is  the  jeweler's  lever 
bench-shears.  In  wood-working  there  are  a  number  of 
fine  tools  used  in  cutting  wood,  in  which  a  single  or 
double  shearing  blade  is  used.  In  cutting  ship  and 
boiler  plates  pOAverful  hydraulic  shearing-machines  are 
used  that  will  easily  cut  through  an  iron  plate  three- 
eighths  of  an  inch  thick. 


CHAPTER  YII 

THE   GREAT   CUTTERS 

THEEE  was  once  found  among  the  ruins  of  an  ancient 
temple  in  Egypt,  a  curious  picture.  The  Egyptians 
had  an  idea  that  the  first  man  was  made  by  one  of 
their  imaginary  gods  out  of  a  lump  of  clay,  and  what 
was  more  natural  than  to  think  the  god  must  have 
made  use  of  a  machine  used  by  potters  in  making  a  vase 
or  bowl.  This  picture  represents  the  god  seated  before 
a  small  round  table,  on  which  was  placed  a  lump  of  soft, 
wet  clay.  The  aim  of  the  picture  was  to  show  that  the 
god  used  a  potter's  tool  in  making  his  clay  man.  How 
the  clay  man  was  turned  into  a  live  man  the  Egyptians 
could  not  explain. 

The  picture  is  of  interest  to  us  because  it  proves  that 
the  machine  now  called  a  thrower,  whirling-table  or 
potter's  wheel  was  known  in  Egypt  long  centuries  ago. 
It  is  so  old  we  do  not  know  who  invented  it  or  where 
it  began  its  long  •  career  of  usefulness.  The  potter's 
wheel  consists  of  a  small  round  table,  supported  by 
an  upright  shaft  that  rests  on  a  pivot  below.  By  the 
use  of  suitable  machinery,  a  belt  being  preferred,  the 
table  may  be  made  to  turn  or  whirl  round  swiftly. 
In  old  tables  the  workman  sat  before  the  table  and 


THE  GREAT  CUTTERS  95 

caused  it  to  turn  by  pushing  it  round  with  his  feet. 
Modern  machines  are  made  to  turn,  either  lay  a  man  or 
boy  turning  a  crank,  or,  better  still,  are  connected  with 
some  steam-engine  or  other  motor. 

In  making  a  plate,  bowl,  cup,  pot,  vase,  saucer  or 
other  stone  or  chinaware  vessel,  the  potter,  sitting  be- 
fore the  whirling- table,  places  or  "throws"  upon  it  a 
lump  of  soft,  wet,  plastic  clay.  The  clay  sticks  to  the 
table  and  whirls  round  with  it.  While  it  is  thus  in 
rapid  motion,  it  is  easy  to  mold  it  into  any  form  the 
potter  desires.  Pressing  his  hand  down  upon  it,  the 
clay  spreads  quickly  out  into  a  dish-like,  circular  form. 

Pressing  with  both  hands  upon  the  plastic  clay,  he 
causes  the  sides  of  the  dish  to  rise,  and  it  becomes  a 
bowl.  Every  touch  of  the  hand  or  fingers  causes  it  to 
assume  new  shapes,  and  all  the  shapes  will  be  circular 
in  form.  To  see  a  well-trained  potter  mold  his  plastic 
clay  on  his  whirling-table  is  most  interesting.  The 
soft  clay  seems  to  spring  up  into  new  and  beautiful 
forms  as  by  magic,  and  we  watch  the  interesting  work 
with  a  feeling  of  admiration  for  the  unknown  master 
workman  who  first  invented  such  an  exceedingly  useful 
machine.  When  the  potter  has  given  his  vessel  the 
shape  he  wishes,  and  particularly  when  the  clay  begins 
to  dry  and  become  hard,  he  sometimes  uses  a  chisel  to 
smooth  and  finish  the  vessel  and  give  it  a  better  sur- 
face. The  potter's  wheel  thus  enables  him  to  use  our 
old  friend,  the  chisel,  in  an  entirely  new  way.  With 
the  hammer  we  used  the  chisel  to  shape  a  block  of 
wood,  the  wood  itself  being  at  rest.  Here  the  chisel 


96 


TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 


is  used  to  shape  a  mass  of  clay,  the  chisel  being  at  rest, 
and  the  clay  in  rapid  motion — exactly  the  reverse  of 
the  usual  way  of  using  a  chisel. 

If  we  look  about  the  house  we  observe  that  the  legs 
of  tables  and  wooden  bedsteads  are  often  round  and 
ornamented  by  circular  grooves  or  circular  moldings. 

We  see  the  same  thi  ng 
on  the  banisters  of 
the  stairway  and  on 
the  newel-post  on  the 
last  step,  and  even 
on  the  posts  of  the 
piazza.  On  examin- 
ing these  things,  we 
see  at  once  that  it 
would  be  very  diffi- 
cult to  make  such 
things  with  any  of 
our  ordinary  wood- 
working tools.  They 
must  be  formed  by  a 
machine  in  some  way 
related  to  the  potter's  wheel.  This  machine  is  one 
of  the  oldest  of  all  machines,  and  is  now  one  of  the 
most  useful  as  well  as  one  of  the  largest  machine-tools 
in  the  world.  We  call  it  to-day  thejathef 

There  are  two  great  classes  of  lathes,  the  wood-turn- 
ing lathes  and  the  metal-turning  lathes.  A  simple 
wood-turning  lathe,  such  as  any  young  boy  or  girl 
should  be  glad  to  own  and  use,  consists  of  a  long  and 


Foot-power  Wood-working  Lathe 


THE  ORE  AT  CUTTERS  97 

narrow  table,  supported  on  four  stout  legs,  the  whole 
being  usually  formed  of  iron  and  made  very  stiff  and 
strong.  On  the  table  or  bed  are  two  supports  called  the 
heads,  one  being  fixed  to  the  bed  near  one  end,  the  left 
end,  and  the  other  on  the  right  being  free  to  slide  along 
the  top  of  the  bed.  The  fixed  head,  called  the  "  live 
head,"  carries  a  horizontal  shaft,  or  spindle,  and  by 
means  of  a  chuck  or  other  device,  a  block  of  wood 
may  be  securely  fastened  to  this  spindle.  The  free,  or 
"  dead  head,"  carries  a  sharp  point,  projecting  towards 
the  center  of  the  spindle,  and  as  it  is  free  to  slide  on 
the  bed,  or  table,  this  dead  head  can  be  pushed  to  the 
left  until  the  sharp  point  touches  the  wood  secured  to 
the  spindle. 

The  wooden  block  is  now  suspended  between  the 
two  heads  and  free  to  turn  with  the  spindle.  By  means 
of  suitable  connections  the  spindle  can  be  controlled 
by  a  belt  extending^)  a  large  "  fly-wheel, "  or  balance- 
wheel — so  called  because  of  its  weight — that,  when  the 
wheel  is  set  in  motion  by  means  of  a  foot-treadle,  serves 
through  its  momentum  to  keep  the  wheel  balanced  or 
flying  evenly  through  the  varying  motion  of  the  foot- 
treadle.  At  one  side  of  the  bed,  between  the  two 
heads,  is  an  iron  support  called  the  tool-rest.  This  is 
free  to  move  on  the  bed,  and  may  be  clamped  directly 
in  front  of  the.  block  of  wood. 

When  all  is  ready  we  may  take  a  sharp  chisel  in  the 

right  hand  and  stand  before  the  lathe  with  one  foot  on 

the  treadle.     A  little  pressure  on  the  treadle  sets  the 

lathe  in  motion,  and  the  block  of  wood  revolves  rap- 

7 


98  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

idly  between  the. two  heads.  We  rest  the  blade  of  the 
ohisel  on  the  tool-rest  with  the  sharp  edge  towards  the 
revolving  block.  Push  it  close  to  the  wood  and  a 
Stream  of  chips  flies  off,  and,  to  our  surprise,  the  block 
of  wood  seems  by  magic  to  take  on  a  new  shape.  We 
stop  the  lathe  and  find  that  a  part  of  the  wood  has 
been  cut  to  a  true  circle.  We  say  the  wood  has  been 
u  turned  "  into  a  new  form.  This  is  the  fine  art  of  turn- 
ing— one  of  the  most  fascinating  accomplishments  any 
young  man  or  woman  can  acquire.  We  discover  that 
under  the  slightest  turn  or  twist  of  the  wrist  the  chisel 
can  give  the  rapidly  moving  wood  a  new  form. 

We  can  turn  a  square  block  into  a  perfect  sphere,  or 
into  an  egg  shape,  or  turn  a  square  rod  into  any  of  the 
hundreds  of  beautiful  shapes  we  see  in  banisters,  chair 
and  table  legs,  newel-posts,  gate-posts  and  round  col- 
umns for  piazzas  and  balconies.  Moreover,  a  skilled 
wood-turner  will  put  stick  after  stick  into  his  lathe, 
and  with  his  different  chisels  turn  them  into  many  dif- 
ferent shapes,  or  put  in  a  hundred  stair-rods  and  turn 
them  all  out  exactly  alike.  Moreover,  so  perfect  have 
these  wood- working  lathes  become  that  we  find  them 
automatically  making  strange  and  intricate  forms,  like 
the  stock  of  a  gun,  a  piano-leg,  or  a  shoe-last,  each 
lathe  making  continuously  the  exact  form  decided  by 
a  pattern  put  in  the  machine.  Such  machines  seem  to 
do  everything  but  think. 

While  the  lathe  has  been  used  for  hundreds  of  years, 
it  was  brought  to  perfection  only  in  our  own  times.  It 
is  now  one  of  the  great  tools  of  the  world,  is  made  in 


THE  GREAT  CUTTERS 


99 


many  forms  and  sizes,  from  the  tiny  lathe  on  the  jewel- 
er's work-bench  to  the  giant  machines  for  turning  the 
shaft  of  a  steamship  or  turning  a  marble  column  for 
some  grand  cathedral.  At  first  lathes  were  only  used 
in  turning  wood.  Now  we  have  wood,  brass,  iron 
and  marble-turning  lathes.  We  shall  find  lathes  in 
every  machine-shop  in  the  world,  and  so  valuable  have 
these  tools  become  that  countless  improvements  and 
additions  have  been  made  to  them  to  fit  them  to 


Large  Power- lathe 

every  possible  variety  of  work.  Lathes  are  used  in 
every  industry,  and  through  them  we  are  enabled  to 
make  a  thousand  beautiful  things  that,  if  made  with 
hand-tools,  would  be  so  expensive  that  very  few  of  us 
could  afford  to  own  them. 

It  would  require  too  much  time  to  examine  in  detail 
the  many  forms  of  lathes  used  in  our  shops  and  manu- 
factories. All  we  can  now  do  is  to  try  to  understand 
the  general  principles  upon  which  all  are  made,  so  that 
when  we  see  a  lathe  we  shall  be  able  to  recognize  it 


100  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

and  to  understand  how  and  why  a  trained  lathe-man 
is  enabled  to  do  such  wonderful  work  in  wood  and 
metals. 

In  the  wood-turning  lathe  a  shower  of  fine  chips  and 
dust  flies  off  under  the  turner's  skillful  chisel.  In  the 
metal-cutting  lathe  the  sharp,  strong  cutting-tool  plows 
off  a  thin,  curling  shaving  as  the  metal  slowly  revolves 
before  it.  In  making  tools  and  machines,  and  parts  of 
machines,  in  making  parts  of  a  ship,  a  locomotive  or  a 
building,  the  piece,  whatever  its  name,  is  first  cast  or 
forged  into  shape.  It  is  of  the  right  shape,  but  is  not 
accurately  finished,  and,  if  it  is  of  a  circular  form  it 
must  go  to  a  lathe  to  be  finished  to  a  true  or  perfect 
circle.  A  fine  lathe  will  enable  a  skillful  lathe-man 
to  turn  or  finish  a  hundred  such  cast  or  wrought  pieces 
to  exactly  the  same  form,  so  that,  when  all  are  finished, 
there  will  not  be  the  difference  of  one  hundredth  of  an 
inch  between  any  two  of  them.  All  lathes  employing 
steam  or  water-power  are  called  power-tools,  the  larger 
and  more  complicated  metal-working  lathes  being  often 
called  machine-lathes. 

When,  about  a  hundred  years  ago,  we  began  to  use 
water  and  steam-power  in  operating  these  large  cutting- 
tools,  people  naturally  asked  if  it  were  not  possible  to 
use  power  in  planing  a  board.  This  was  a  land  of  for- 
ests, and  there  was  a  great  demand  for  fine  woodwork. 
The  skillful  wood- workers  of  those  early  days  could 
make  many  beautiful  things  with  hand-planes,  but  such 
work  was  always  expensive.  If  the  lathe  could  make 
a  smooth,  round  stair-rail,  why  could  not  some  machine 


THE  GREAT: 'GUTTERS  101 

be  used  to  smooth  and  finish  flat  surfaces?'  ' A£ first 
large  sliding-planes  were  tried,  but  they  did  not  prove 
to  be  very  useful.  Then  came  a  modification  of  the 
lathe  idea.  In  the  lathe  the  material  revolves  and  the 
cutting-tool  is  at  rest.  Why  not  make  a  knife  revolve 
rapidly  while  the  material  (wood)  passes  under  it? 
Upon  this  idea  was  based  a  multitude  of  remarkable 
wood- working  machines.  The  number  of  these  tools 
is  so  great  that  all  we  can  do  is  to  examine  the  few 
general  principles  upon  which  all  are  built,  so  that 
when  we  go  about  among  the  great  wood-working 
shops  we  shall  recognize  them  and  understand  and 
admire  the  wonderful  work  they  do  for  us. 

The  first  of  these  machines  is  the  wood-planer.  It 
is  used  to  plane  down  the  rough  boards  that  come  from 
the  sawmill,  and  make  them  ready  for  the  carpenter, 
cabinet-maker  and  builder.  Two  types  of  these  planers 
were  invented.  In  one  a  number  of  knives  were  fast- 
ened to  a  spindle  suspended  over  a  table.  When  the 
spindle  was  set  in  motion  the  knives  revolved  in  a 
horizontal  position,  and  a  board  pushed  under  them,  on 
the  table,  would  be  shaved  or  chipped  by  the  whirling 
knives.  The  table  was  adjusted  to  just  the  right  height 
to  enable  the  knives  to  shave  off  thin  shavings,  and  by 
suitable  machinery  the  board  was  pushed  along  under 
the  knives  as  fast  as  planed  down  by  the  knives. 
In  modern  planing-machines  cylindrical  knives  re- 
volve in  a  horizontal  position  over  the  board  as  it  passes 
under  them,  and  skim  or  shave  off  the  surface,  leaving 
it  beautifully  true  and  smooth.  These  great  wood- 


102  TOOLS* AND  MACHINES 

planers,  when  a£  work,  send  up  a  cloud  of  dusty  shav- 
ings and,  in  the  best  shops,  an  air  (suction)  current 
sucks  them  up  as  fast  as  they  are  made,  and  sweeps 
them  away  to  a  distance  where  they  may  be  safely 
burned  to  make  steam.  A  large  planer,  when  at  work, 
gives  out  a  loud,  purring  sound  that  once  heard  will 
never  be  forgotten.  It  is  between  a  moan  and  a  sigh, 
and  makes  us  feel  that  the  poor  dead  tree  passing 
through  the  machine  sighs  for  its  lost  life  in  its  home 
in  the  calm  and  happy  forest. 

With  our  vast  wealth  of  lumber,  now,  through  our 
own  greedy  folly,  passing  rapidly  away,  our  tool- 
makers  early  saw  that  the  idea  of  the  swiftly  revolving 
knife  could  be  applied  to  many  other  styles  of  wood- 
working beside  planing.  With  abundant  material  and 
a  lively  demand  for  cheap  and  beautiful  woodwork, 
there  was  a  demand  for  power-tools  of  many  varied 
forms.  These  machines  are  called  shapers  and  mold- 
ing-machines. In  one  type  of  these  machines  a  spindle 
called  the  "  cutter-head  "  is  placed  upright  at  the  cen- 
ter of  a  smooth  table,  being  supported  below  the  table. 
To  this  cutter-head  may  be  fastened  sharp  cutting-tools, 
or  knives  of  various ,  forms.  When  by  means  of  the 
proper  machinery  the  cutter-head  is  made  to  revolve, 
the  knives  whirl  round  so  swiftly  that  they  appear 
like  a  single  shadowy  knife.  If  now  we  lay  a  piece  of 
board,  having  square  edges,  on  the  table  and  push  it 
against  the  cutter-head,  we  see  that  the  edge  is  shaped 
or  molded  into  the  exact  form  of  the  knives.  By 
sliding  the  board  about  on  the  table  we  can  in  a 


THE  GREAT  CUTTERS  103 

moment  or  two  transform  the  square -edged  board  into 
one  having  a  finely  molded  edge  on  every  side.  By 
changing  the  knife  we  can  change  the  shape  of  the  mold- 
ed edge  cut  on  the  wood.  For  this  reason,  such  a  ma- 
chine is  called  a  shaper.  By  changing  the  position  of  the 
cutter-head,  and  presenting  the  knives  at  different  angles 
or  by  inverting  the  cutter-head,  and  by  using  knives 
of  different  shapes,  we  can  shape  or  mold  wood  into 
scores  of  beautiful  and  useful  forms.  We  can  also 
use  the  shaper  to  cut  or  rout  out  sunken  panels, 
make  the  large  wooden  letters  sometimes  used  in 
printing-presses,  and  carve  bas-relief  decorations  in 
wood.  The  cutter-head  and  its  knives  are  sometimes 
supported  on  brackets  or  movable  arms  over  the  table, 
and  then  the  work  is  kept  at  rest,  by  clamping  it  to 
the  table,  and  the  workman  guides  the  cutter-head  to. 
its  work.  Such  a  machine  is  called  a  router  oi-routing- 
machine.  The  large  machines  for  making  the  long 
moldings  or  "trim"  used  in  decorating  houses  are 
called  molding-machines.  They  form  a  class  by  them- 
selves, and  will  repay  careful  study,  for  they  are  the 
expression  of  the  highest  art  of  the  maker  of  wood- 
working tools. 

Many  people  look  back  with  regret  to  the  old  colo- 
nial days,'  when  there  were  no  molding-machines. 
They  wish  we  could  have  nothing  in  our  homes,  schools, 
and  public  buildings,  but  the  good,  honest  work  of  the 
long  dead  master  workmen,  who  used  the  hand-tools 
of  the  colonists.  Now,  in  point  of  fact,  the  tools  made 
to-day  are  infinitely  superior  to  the  old  hand-tools  used 


104  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

before  the  Revolution,  and  just  as  fine  workmen  live 
to-day  as  then.  We  can  have  just  as  honest  and  artis- 
tic work  as  our  fathers  if  we  are  ready  to  pay  for  it. 
We  all  like  to  see  the  beautiful  work  of  a  real  artist. 
The  very  term  "  hand-made,"  implies  an  added  value 
in  any  work.  Hand- work  has  a  beauty  and  value  of 
its  own,  and  many  are  glad  to  purchase  such  work, 
whatever  its  price.  At  the  same  time,  there  is  a  real 
and  honest  beauty  in  this  overfloAving  abundance  of 
cheap  machine- work.  It  may  be  that  much  of  it  is 
exactly  like  much  more,  and  to  see  a  great  mass  of  it 
together  may  seem  to  many  of  us  tiresome  and  monot- 
onous, yet  this  rarely  happens,  for  it  is  soon  widely 
scattered,  a  little  here  and  a  little  elsewhere. 

One  chair  may  be  exactly  like  a  thousand  others  in 
the  same  factory,  yet  it  is  better  that  good,  handsome, 
well-made  chairs  should  be  in  a  thousand  homes  than 
that  one  fine  chair  should  be  in  one  house,  and  nine  hun- 
dred and  ninety -nine  families  have  only  a  three-legged 
stool  or  no  chairs  at  all.  The  machines  make  beautiful 
things  cheap.  Hand- work  alone  without  machines 
would  make  every  beautiful  thing  exceedingly  costly. 
Hand- work  and  machine- work  combined  give  us  two 
kinds  of  beauty,  and  make  it  possible  for  all  of  us  to 
have  beautiful  things  in  our  homes. 

Tip  to  the  time  of  the  invention  of  the  steam-engine 
and  the  introduction  of  steamboats  and  railroads,  all 
ironwork  was  cast  or  forged  and  finished  by  the  aid 
of  hand-tools.  With  the  demand  for  larger  pieces  of 
metal,  it  became  necessary,  as  we  saw  in  our  study  of 


THE  ORE  AT  CUTTERS  105 

the  great  hammers,  to  invent  machines  for  handling 
iron  in  larger  masses.  Blast-furnaces  and  forges  made  it 
possible  to  make  large  things,  like  the  parts  of  engines, 
but  none  of  these  things  could  be  used  in  their  original 
condition,  as  they  came  from  the  molding-sand  or  the 
anvil.  They  were  of  the  right  shape  and  size,  but  not 
accurately  finished,  and  every  piece  required  more  or 
less  hand- work  to  fit  it  exactly  to  its  place  and  purpose. 
This  involved  a  great  deal  of  hard  labor,  and  our  master 
machinists  saw  that  we  must  have  machine-tools  to  do 
this  work.  To-day  we  have  in  use  a  vast  number  of 
the  most  remarkable  metal- working  tools,  and  when 
we  examine  them  we  wonder  how  it  is  possible  that 
men  could  have  invented  and  brought  to  perfection 
such  giants  of  steel  and  iron,  such  complicated  and 
delicate  mechanisms,  all  designed  to  save  labor  in  metal- 
working.  We  have  only  to  imagine  what  it  would  be 
to  go  without  the  telegraph,  the  steamship,  the  loco- 
motive, the  telephone,  the  electric  car  and  the  electric 
lights  and  gaslights,  and  ten  thousand  things  that  so 
add  to  the  value  of  human  life,  to  see  what  the  world 
would  be  without  these  multitudes  of  iron-working 
machine-tools. 

We  sometimes  meet  singular  people  who  say  that  they 
never  saw  the  inside  of  a  machine-shop,  and  that  they 
do  not  care  for  machinery.  Such  persons  miss  a  great 
deal  that,  did  they  give  a  little  thought  to  the  subject, 
would  open  their  eyes  and  minds  to  new  sights  and 
wider  knowledge,  and  give  them  a  new  interest  in  life. 
A  visit  to  a  machine-shop  may  seem,  at  first,  to  be  dis- 


106  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

agreeable.  The  place  is  dark,  black,  often  very  dirty, 
ill-smelling  and  noisy,  and  the  multitude  of  machines 
seems  perplexing  and  confusing.  Now  this  description 
of  a  machine-shop  is  only  partially  true.  The  best 
modern  machine  shops  are  clean,  bright  and  pleasant ; 
many  are  large,  handsome  halls,  in  which  it  is  a 
pleasure  to  work.  As  for  the  machines,  they  are 
easily  understood  when  we  arrange  them  iu  a  few 
simple  classes  according  to  their  method  of  doing 
work. 

All  the  grand  tools  used  in  a  machine-shop,  both 
great  and  small,  can  be  divided  into  .three  great  groups : 
the  cutters,  the  borers  and  the  grinders.  The  borers 
and  grinders  we  will  examine  later,  and  give  our  atten- 
tion to  the  great  cutting-machines.  These  metal-cut- 
ting machine-tools  are  divided  into  two  great  classes — 
the  lathes  and  the  planers. 

The  metal- working  lathe  in  general  appearance  re- 
sembles the  wood- working  lathe.  There  is,  however, 
this  difference:  in  the  wood-lathe  a  comparatively  soft 
material  is  cut  or  turned  at  a  high  speed.  In  the  metal- 
lathe  a  very  hard  material  is  made  to  revolve  at  a  slow 
speed,  but  with  great  power,  before  very  hard,  sharp 
steel  tools.  In  the  wood-lathe  the  shavings  fly  off  in 
a  fine,  dusty  shower;  in  the  metal-lathe  a  thin,  curling 
sliver  or  shaving  is  pared  or  shaved  off  by  the  strong, 
firmly  held  cutting-tool.  The  wood-turner  can  hold  his 
chisel  in  his  hand,  using  the  tool-rest  to  steady  the  tool. 
The  man  using  the  metal-lathe  must  clamp  his  tool 
firmly  to  the  machine,  for  no  human  strength  could 


THE  GREAT  CUTTERS  107 

resist  the  terrific  strain  on  the  point  of  his  tool  as  it 
plows  its  way  over  the  smoking  iron  in  the  lathe. 

When  we  examined  the  wood-  molding  machine  or 
shaper,  we  saw  a  rapidly  revolving  knife,  used  to  carve 
or  mold  wood.  So  we  shall  find  in  every  machine- 
shop  a  large  number  of  most  interesting  machines  em- 
ploying the  same  idea  in  the  same  way,  but  at  a  slower 
speed.  These  tools  are  called  milling-machines,  and 
in  all  of  them  we  shall  observe  the  use  of  revolving 
cutting-tools,  supported  in  various  positions,  horizontal, 
vertical  or  at  some  angle  between  these  directions,  and 
used  to  cut  or  chip  metals  held  firmly  against  their  steel 
teeth.  Milling-machines  are  comparatively  new,  and 
they  sprang  from  the  demand  for  tools  that  would 
cut  out  of  iron  the  novel  and  curious  forms  used 
in  making  typewriters,  bicycles,  sewing-machines,  and 
the  thousand  useful  things  used  in  the  arts  and  man- 
ufactures. They  are  of  wonderful  interest,  for  they 
are  exceedingly  ingenious  in  design,  and  do  their 
work  with  remarkable  speed  and  precision.  All  are, 
as  far  as  possible,  automatic,  the  machine  itself  per- 
forming every  operation  in  turn  with  the  least  possible 
attention  from  the  workman. 

In  the  wood-planer  we  saw  the  use  of  rapidly  mov- 
ing knives  upon  wood  that  was  caused  to  pass  under 
the  knives.  The  metal-planer  employs  a  fixed  cutting- 
tool,  supported  upon  a  strong  frame,  and  cutting  a  thin 
and  narrow  shaving  from  a  block  of  metal  that  is 
pushed  with  great  force  against  it.  The  tool  is  held 
rigid  over  a  moving  table,  and  the  iron  to  be  planed  is 


108 


TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 


firmly  clamped  to  this  table,  and  it  is  the  forward 
motion  of  the  table  that  causes  the  steel  tool  to  plow 
its  way  over  the  iron.  The  advance  of  the  table  to- 
wards the  tool  is  slow  and  very  powerful.  The  moment 
the  tool  has  passed  over  the  iron  and  planed  off  a  thin 
sliver,  the  table  quickly  returns  to  a  new  position 


Iron-planer 

to  be  ready  for  the  next  slow- working  stroke.  This 
slow  advance  and  quick  return,  we  shall  find,  is  char- 
acteristic of  all  the  metal-planing  machines,  both  great 
and  small. 

Closely  related  to  the  planer  are  two  other  metal- 
working  machines,  called  the  shaper  and  the  slotting- 
macbine.  In  these  machines  the  metal  to  be  cut  or 
shaped  is  firmly  held  in  position,  while  the  cutting-tool 


THE  GREAT  CUTTERS  109 

moves  over  it.  The  shaper,  which  slides  forward  to 
its  work,  is  more  like  the  original  hand-plane  than  the 
planer,  yet  it  differs  in  this,  that  the  forward  stroke  is 
very  slow  and  powerful,  and  the  backward  stroke,  or 
return,  is  swift.  The  cutting- tool  in  the  shaper  usually 
moves  horizontally.  In  the  slotting-machine  the  move- 


Shaper 

ment  of  the  cutting-tool  is  vertical,  the  effective  stroke 
being  downward.  All  these  machine-tools  are  essen- 
tially planers.  They  can  be  found  in  every  machine- 
shop  in  the  world,  and  are  often  given  special  names, 
according  to  their  work.  All  are  provided  with  many 
interesting  appliances  for  increasing  the  speed  of 
the  work  and  for  enlarging  the  field  of  their  use- 
fulness. We  can  well  afford  to  pause  and  examine 


110  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

them  with  the  greatest  care,  for  they  are  all  worthy 
of  our  highest  respect  and  admiration.  To  pass 
them  by  as  uninteresting  or  unworthy  our  atten- 
tion is  to  confess  our  own  ignorance  of  the  wonderful 
scientific  progress  of  our  modern  master  builders  of 
tools.  Better  to  know  less  of  the  weak  and  silly  lives 
of  dead  kings  or  imaginary  gods  and  goddesses,  and 
know  something  of  the  men  who  make  and  use  these 
splendid  machine-tools.  Kings  and  generals  have,  per- 
haps, done  a  little  good  in  the  world,  but  greater  than 
them  all  is  the  man  who  invents  a  new  machine-tool 
that  by  its  giant  labors  makes  all  our  lives  safer,  more 
useful,  more  worth  living. 

Among  the  oldest  of  the  knives  is  the  sickle.  For 
thousands  of  years  men  gathered  wheat  by  cutting 
down  a  few  stalks  at  a  time  with  this  crescent-shaped 
harvesting-knife.  So,  also,  in  cutting  grass,  men  used 
the  scythe,  but  long  ago  they  saw  that  both  scythe  and 
sickle  were  slow  and  inefficient.  For  years  many  at- 
tempts were  made  to  make  some  kind  of  machine  that 
would  harvest  grass,  wheat  and  oats.  All  these  ma- 
chines failed,  and  it  seemed,  up  to  our  own  times,  as  if 
all  harvesting  must  be  done  with  hand-tools.  This 
could  not  continue,  because,  as  more  and  more  people 
learned  to  use  machinery,  more  and  more  people  lived 
in  cities  and  followed  other  trades  than  the  growing  of 
food;  necessarily  there  must  come  a  time  when  the 
cost  of  harvesting  our  crops  would  be  so  high  that  food 
itself  would  be  high,  and  all  the  people  would  suffer 
because  of  the  high  cost  of  a  loaf  of  bread.  This  criti- 


THE  GREAT  CUTTERS  HI 

cal  time  came  early  in  the  last  century.  Our  cities 
were  growing  rapidly,  the  railroads,  factories,  and  mills 
were  calling  so  many  people  from  the  farms  that,  in 
spite  of  the  emigration  of  millions  of  people  from 
Europe,  our  farms  were  short  of  "  hands."  It  became 
useless  to  raise  great  crops,  for  there  were  not  men 
enough  to  gather  them.  Machinery  had  reduced  the 
cost  of  making  flour,  and  the  railroads  and  steam 
vessels  had  reduced  the  cost  of  transporting  it,  and 
machinery  must  be  used  on  the  farm  or  the  price  of 
every  loaf  would  be  high.  Out  of  this  state  of  affairs 
came  one  of  the  finest  machine-tools  in  the  world  — 
the  harvesting-machine.  We  cannot  afford,  as  Ameri- 
cans, to  be  ignorant  concerning  these  great  inventions. 

The  first  of  these  harvesters  is  the  mower,  the  most 
simple  machine  being  the  common  lawn-mower  we  see 
in  every  front  yard.  The  moment  we  examine  it  we 
see  that  it  is  really  a  machine-knife.  It  has  a  roller 
and  a  knife-blade  bent  into  a  spiral  form.  Both  are 
supported  in  a  little  carriage,  and  by  means  of  simple 
connections  the  spiral  knife  can  be  made  to  revolve, 
the  cutting- edge  being  at  all  times  close  to  the  roller. 

As  the  machine  is  placed  on  the  grass  we  see  that 
some  of  the  blades  of  grass  stand  up  between  the  roller 
and  its  spiral  knife.  On  pushing  the  machine  forward 
over  the  grass  we  observe  that  the  blades  of  grass 
caught  between  the  knife  and  the  roller  are  cut  off 
with  a  shearing  cut,  precisely  as  if  the  machine  were 
a  pair  of  shears  having  a  continuous  cutting  motion, 
all  in  one  direction.  The  surprising  thing  is  the  ex- 


112  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

treme  simplicity  of  the  machine,  and  yet  we  see  that  it 
does  its  work  with  speed  and  precision.  These  grass- 
cutters  are  all  comparatively  small,  the  largest  used  in 
city  parks  being  drawn  by  a  horse,  and  their  work  is 
merely  to  shave  or  trim  the  grass.  To  cut  grass  for 
hay  is  quite  a  different  piece  of  work,  and  demands  a 
larger  and  very  different  machine.  It  must  be  large 
enough  to  cut  a  wide  swath  at  a  good  speed.  It  must 
have  a  carriage,  with  its  pole  and  harness  for  the 
horses,  and  carrying  the  machinery  used  to  convey  the 
power  generated  by  the  forward  movement  of  the 
horses  to  the  cutting-machine.  At  one  side  of  the 
carriage  hangs  an  arm  or  bar,  projecting  at  a  right 
angle  with  the  advance  of  the  carriage.  This  bar  is 
suspended  a  few  inches  above  the  earth,  and  along  the 
forward  edge  is  arranged  a  series  of  hollow  fingers 
or  steel  teeth.  Within  these  fingers  is  a  series  of 
lancet-shaped  or  double-edged  knives  attached  to  a  bar 
that,  by  suitable  connections  with  the  carriage,  can  be 
made  to  vibrate  from  side  to  side.  The  man  seated  on 
the  machine  guides  his  horses  up  to  the  edge  of  the  hay- 
field,  the  bar  supporting  the  fingers  and  knives  project- 
ing over  the  grass  to  be  cut.  On  starting  the  horses 
forward,  the  motion  causes  the  knife-bar  to  vibrate 
between  the  fingers,  and  at  each  vibration  the  stalks 
of  grass  caught  between  the  fixed  fingers  and  the 
moving  knives  are  sheared  off.  The  work  is  done 
as  fast  as  the  horses  can  walk,  and  not  a  single  blade 
is  missed,  the  grass  falling  in  a  continuous  shower  as 
the  machine  passes  over  it. 


THE  GREAT  CUTTERS  113 

This  single  idea  of  the  vibrating  lancet  knives  be- 
tween fixed  hollow  fingers  is  one  of  the  most  important 
and  valuable  of  all  modern  inventions.  It  has  been 
employed  in  many  ways,  and  is  used  every  year  in  a 
million  machines.  So  important  and  valuable  is  the 
mowing-machine  that  it  has  spread  all  over  the  world, 
and  has  been  so  improved  and  developed  that  it  is  now 
used  to  cut  wheat,  bind  it  into  sheaves  and  tie  each 
bundle  up  and  leave  it  lying  upon  the  ground  ready 
for  the  harvest  wagons.  When  a  mowing-machine  is 
used  to  cut  wheat,  gather  it  into  bundles  and  bind  it 
up,  it  is  called  a  reaper  or  harvester,  or  sometimes  a 
reaper  and  binder.  When  used  to  cut  grass  for  hay 
it  is  usually  called  a  mower  or  mowing-machine. 
8 


CHAPTEE  VIII 

THE    SAW  AND  THE    SAWMILL 

observed  in  our  studies  of  the  knife  that  the 
blades  of  all  good  knives  that  are  in  proper  condition 
for  cutting  have  a  continuous,  unbroken  edge.  Cen- 
turies ago  men  noticed  this  and  took  pains  to  keep  their 
knife- blades  free  from  nicks  or  notches.  We  do  not 
know  who  first  observed  the  fact  that  if  a  knife-blade 
have  many  nicks  or  notches  along  the  edge  it  will  be- 
have in  a  very  different  manner  from  a  straight-edge 
knife,  and  can  be  used  in  a  wholly  different  way  and 
for  different  purposes.  We  can  only  imagine  that  this 
early  observer  tried  his  nicked  knife  as  a  cutting-tool 
for  tearing  apart  a  cord,  a  grapevine  or  the  small  limb 
of  a  tree,  and  found  that  it  worked  very  well  as  a  di- 
viding or  separating-tool. 

A  knife  can  be  used  to  cut  a  piece  of  wood  by  push- 
ing it  along  the  wood,  as  in  whittling  a  stick.  A  knife 
*with  a  notched  edge  can  be  drawn  across  the  wood  and 
it  will  soon  separate  the  wood  into  two  parts.  With  a 
notched  knife  we  make,  not  shavings,  but  sawdust. 
We  recognize  that  any  notched  or  serrated  cutting- 
blade  is  a  saw.  The  origin  of  the  saw  is  lost  in  the 
long-forgotten  centuries,  yet  we  may  feel  sure  that  the 


THE  SAW  AND   THE  SAWMILL  H5 

saw  is  quite  as  old  as  the  knife.  The  ragged  edge  of  an 
oyster-shell  or  the  curious  weapon  carried  by  the  saw- 
fish may  have  first  suggested  the  saw.  However  it 
may  have  been  originated,  we  readily  see  that  it  is 
one  of  the  most  ancient  and  most  useful  of  all  the 
tools. 

We  take  up  a  common  carpenter's  saw  and  examine 
its  edge,  and  see  that  it  consists  of  a  series  of  serra- 
tions or  notches,  all  of  the  same  size  and  all  having  a 
little  cutting-edge  on  each  side.  Looking  along  the 
edge  we  see  that  each  tooth  is  bent  slightly  to  the  right 
or  left.  It  is  said  to  be  "  set "  in  that  position,  every 
alternate  tooth  being  set  to  the  right  and  the  others  set 
to  the  left.  Each  tooth  is  a  tool,  and  when  the  saw  is 
used  each  tooth  acts  as  a  tiny  cutting-chisel  that  chips 
out  the  small  bits  of  wood  we  call  sawdust.  As  the 
saw  may  have  a  hundred  of  these  little  chisels,  we  can 
easily  see  that  a  dozen  or  more  may  be  at  work  at  the 
same  instant,  each  cutting  out  tiny  bits  of  the  wood 
and  rapidly  dividing  the  block  of  wood  into  two  parts. 
When  we  use  a  knife  to  cut  wood,  we  separate  it  with 
a  clean  cut.  With  a  saw  we  destroy  a  portion  of  the 
wood  and  turn  it  into  sawdust.  Each  tooth  cuts  off  a 
bit  of  the  wood,  and  soon  the  saw-cut  or  "kerf  "  is 
filled  with  this  waste  sawdust.  Were  the  teeth  not  set 
alternately  to  the  right  and  left,  the  sawdust  would  fill 
and  choke  up  the  kerf,  and  the  saw  would  jam  or  stick 
fast  in  the  kerf.  The  setting  of  the  teeth  cuts  the  kerf 
a  trifle  wider  than  the  saw-blade,  and  this  leaves  room 
for  the  sawdust  to  escape.  We  see  that  at  every  stroke 


116  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

of  the  saw  some  of  the  sawdust  is  pushed  out  of  the 
kerf.  This  setting  of  the  teeth  seems  to  have  been  in- 
vented thousands  of  years  ago.  In  using  the  saw  we 
observe,  also,  that  it  does  its  work  upon  both  the  push 
forward  and  the  pull  backward,  or,  as  we  say,  at  both 
strokes.  Some  ancient  saws  were  made  to  be  used  only 
upon  one  stroke,  and  in  some  countries  they  are  still 
used  in  that  way,  but  it  is  plain  that  two  effective 
strokes  are  better  than  one  effective  stroke  and  one  idle 
stroke  alternately.  That  is  too  slow  for  our  times. 

Get  a  small  piece  of  board  and  a  hatchet.  Hold  the 
board  upright  and  strike  it  upon  one  edge.  We  at 
once  discover  that  striking  either  one  of  two  edges  pro- 
duces no  effect,  except  to  dent  the  wood,  while  striking 
either  one  of  the  two  other  edges  splits  the  wood  apart. 
To  understand  this  we  examine  the  wood,  and  see  that 
it  is  built  up  of  bundles  of  woody  fibers  placed  side  by 
L  side  and  fastened  together.  These  are  called  the  fibers 
or  granuyf  the  wood,  and  our  experiment  proves  that 
the  wood  is  stronger  across  the  grain  than  along  the 
grain.  The  fibers  are  tough  and  strong  and  resist  the 
blow  of  the  hatchet,  while  they  are  but  loosely  held 
together  and  readily  split  apart  when  struck  in  line  or 
with  the  grain.  Every  piece  of  wood  shows  the  fibers 
of  the  wood  in  one  direction  and  the  ends  of  the  fibers 
in  the  other.  It  is  this  that  led,  no  doubt,  to  the  ex- 
pression "against  the  grain."  A  boy  may  be  asked 
by  his  mother  to  split  some  kindlings  for  the  kitchen 
stove  and  say  that  the  request  "goes  against  the 
grain,"  or  against  his  inclination,  while  he  will  split 


THE  SAW  AND   THE  SAWMILL  H7 

the  wood  itself  ' '  with  the  grain, ' '  which,  we  see,  is 
a  very  pretty  paradox. 

Now,  in  preparing  firewood,  a  boy  can  do  very  little 
with  the  hatchet  alone,  for  the  wood,  as  it  comes  from 
the  tree,  is  too  long  for  the  stove.  Then  he  learns  the 
value  of  the  saw,  for  he  uses  it  to  saw  the  wood 
apart,  "  across  the  grain," 
into  short  pieces  or  M/1AW 
"  stove  lengths."  Saw- 
ing  is  much  harder  work  Ripisaw 

than     splitting    with    a 

hatchet.  "I'll  chop  and  you  saw,"  said  the  country 
boy  to  his  city -boy  visitor  as  they  went  out  to  the 
woodpile.  "No,  sir,"  said  the  city  boy,  "I've  read 
about  sawing  and  splitting,  and  we  will  take  turns  at 
the  chopping-block,  or  I  will  not  play." 

The  writers  of  story  books  sometimes  tell  us  that 
their  heroes  carried  a  "  Damascus  blade  "  or  a  "  Toledo 
blade,"  meaning  a  sword  of  such  fine  steel  that  it  could 

be  bent  into  a  circle 
without  breaking,  and 
carry  an  edge  like  a 

razor.     A  good  Amer- 

r 
ican  saw  is  as  fine  a 

Cross-cut  Saw 

piece  of  work  as  the 

most  famous  sword  ever  made.  Look  at  one  in  the 
carpenter's  kit.  It  is  strong,  elastic,  sharp,  and  beau- 
tifully polished — a  better  thing  than  any  sword.  All 
our  carpenters  carry  two  chief  saws,  one  adapted  to 
sawing  across  the  grain,  called  a  cross-cut  saw,,  and 


118  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

one  for  sawing  along  or  with  the  grain,  and  called  a 
rip-saw.  Saws,  whatever  their  size,  shape  or  use,  are 
usually  divided  into  these  two  styles — -the  cross-cut 
and  the  rip-saw.  The  trained  user  of  saws  examines 
every  piece  of  wood  he  wishes  to  saw  to  ascertain  the 
grain  of  the  wood,  and  selects  the  right  tool  to  fit  the 
grain.  Every  user  of  tools  sees  also  that  his  saw  is 
sharp  and  properly  set. 

When  the  Pilgrims  landed  from  the  Mayflower 
they  brought  ashore  an  ax  and  an  adz,  and  with  these 
it  was  possible  to  cut  down  trees  and  build  log-houses. 
They  brought  also  a  saw,  because  the  Pilgrim  house- 
mother wanted  shelves  in  her  buttery  and  panels  in  the 
wainscot  and  closets  for  her  linen  and  china,  and  these 
things  could  only  be  made  by  sawing  up  the  big  logs 
into  thin  boards  and  sawing  the  boards  into  the  proper 
shapes  and  sizes.  To  make  these  sawn  boards  the  colo- 
nial carpenters  first  dug  a  pit  in  the  ground  and  laid 
rough  planks  over  the  open  mouth.  A  log  was  then 
laid  on  these  and  one  man  climbed  down  into  the  saw- 
pit,  while  another  stood  over  his  head  on  the  planks. 
The  man  below  was  called  the  "  pit-sawyer,"  the  man 
above  the  "  top-sawyer. "  To  saw  the  log  they 
used  a  big,  two-handled  rip-saw,  pulling  and  push- 
ing it  up  and  down  between  them.  In  this  way  the 
two  sawyers  sawed  fine  boards  out  of  big  logs.  The 
top-sawyer  used  the  most  skill,  and  was  thought  to 
be  the  best  man.  Hence,  to  call  a  man  "  a  regular 
top-sawyer"  was  to  pay  him  a  high  compliment, 
and  the  expression  still  lingers  in  New  England,  a 


THE  SAW  AND  THE  SAWMILL  H9 

hundred  years  after  the  last  saw-pit  was  filled  up  and 
abandoned. 

From  the  great  pit-saws  and  the  carpenter's  rip-saw 
and  cross-cut  saw,  have  sprung  the  hundred  different 
kinds  of  saws  now  in  use.  The  lumberman  and  builder 
still  use  double-handled  saws  eight  feet  long,  and  large 
cross-cut  single-handled  saws  from  four  to  six  feet  long. 
Hand-saws  range  from  fourteen  to  twenty-six  inche,s 
in  length.  Saws  for  fine 
woodwork  are  often  made  .= 
with  stiff  blades  strength- 
ened by  a  thicker  piece  of 

Keyhole-saw 

steel  at   the   back   of   the 

blade.  Such  saws  are  often  used  in  fine  joinery  and 
cabinet-making  with  a  ' ( miter-box ' '  or  guide-box  for 
cutting  wood  at  an  angle.  Narrow,  flexible  saws,  like 
the  compass-saw  and  keyhole-saw,  are  used  for  making 
circular  or  curving  cuts. 

In  the  kitchen  the  cook  uses  a  meat-saw,  having  a 
narrow  blade  set  in  a  frame.  We  see  larger  saws  of 
the  same  kind  at  the  butcher's  shop.  There  are  many 
kinds  of  these  frame-saws  used  in  sawing  wood  and 
metal,  the  most  common  frame-saw  being  the  wood- 
saw  that  hangs  in  every  woodshed  in  the  land.  It  is 
the  farmer's  handy  saw,  and  every  farmer's  boy  has 
used  one.  Wood-sawing  is  good  exercise,  and  many 
a  country  boy  now  a  city  man  owes  his  strong  arms, 
good  lungs  and  fine  health  to  the  practice  he  had 
with  a  wood-saw  in  the  old  home.  The  machinist, 
plumber,  and  railroad  man  use  frame-saws  called  hack- 


120 


TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 


Hack-saw 


saws,  some  of  them  having  blades  that  can  be  adjusted 
to  any  angle  in  the  frame.     The  surgeon  uses  the  finest 

saws  that  are  made,  and 
in  every  art,  trade  and 
handicraft  we  shall  find 
saws  of  some  kind. 
Even  the  ice-harvester 

uses  a  saw  to  cut  his  crystal  blocks  apart,  and  the 
retail  ice-dealer  carries  a  saw  to  cut  his  ice  into  blocks 
for  the  refrigerator.  It  would  be  difficult  to  find 
any  people  the  whole  earth  around  who  do  not  use 
some  form  of  this  ancient 
tool. 

We  do  not  know  who 
first  thought  of  using  a 
water-wheel  to  drive  a 
saw.  Some  crude  ma- 
chines for  sawing  wood 
by  water-power  were  used 
in  Spain  as  early  as 
A.D.  1420,  and  a  hundred 
years  later  they  were 
quite  common  all  over 
Europe.  They  were 
called  sawmills,  probably 
because  the  first  water- 
wheels  used  to  move 
saws  were  also  used  in 

grinding-mills.      In   1596   a  sawmill  that  would  cut 
two  boards  at  once  was  built  in  Holland,  and  in  1663 


Ice-saw 


THE  SAW  AND   THE  SAWMILL  121 

a  man  from  Holland  tried  to  erect  a  sawmill  in  Eng- 
land, but  the  English  sawyers  would  not  let  him 
use  it,  for  they  said  it  would  ruin  their  business. 
Another  mill  was  built  in  1767,  but  the  sawyers 
burned  it  down.  In  our  own  country  a  sawmill 
was  built  at  Natchez  early  in  this  same  century,  but 
even  our  southern  sawyers  thought  such  a  mill  would 
injure  the  sawing  business,  and  promptly  destroyed 
it.  However,  the  sawmill  was  too  valuable  to  be 
neglected,  and  they  soon  increased  rapidly,  in  spite 
of  the  pit-sawyers.  People  wanted  lumber  to  build 
homes,  but  the  hand-sawn  boards  were  too  costly, 
and  it  took  too  long  to  saw  them.  Sawmills  made 
better  boards,  in  larger  quantities,  in  less  time  and  for 
less  money.  The  more  boards  made,  the  more  carpen- 
ters to  be  employed,  and  the  cheaper  the  houses  the 
more  families  could  find  new  and  comfortable  homes. 
All  the  pit-sawyers  were  Americans,  and  in  the  Ameri- 
can fashion  quickly  gave  up  a  hard,  laborious,  ill-paid 
business  for  cleaner  and  more  profitable  employment. 
To-day  there  is  not  a  man  in  the  country  who  would 
go  back  to  this  miserable  trade,  and  yet  the  old  sawyers 
burned  down  the  early  sawmills — which  to  us  to-day 
seems  very  curious  and  very  foolish. 

At  first,  all  the  sawmills  used  straight  saws  resem- 
bling the  pit-sawyer's  rip-saw,  simple  machinery  being 
used  to  drag  the  saws  up  and  down  as  the  log  was 
pushed  against  them.  At  first,  one  saw  only  was  used, 
but  it  did  not  take  long  to  discover  that  one  water- 
wheel  would  supply  enough  power  to  move  two  oj 


122  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

more  saws.  These  saws  were  set  in  frames  side  by 
side  or,  as  the  mill-men  expressed  it,  "  arranged  in 
gangs,"  the  frame  being  moved  up  and  down  by  the 
water-wheel,  and  the  saws  working  side  by  side  through 
the  log,  the  space  between  the  saws  regulating  the 
thickness  of  the  boards. 

The  first  great  improvement  in  the  sawmill  was  the 
invention  of  the  circular  saw  about  a  hundred  years 
ago.  A  steel  disc  with  teeth  upon  its  edge  could  be 
set  up  on  edge  and  driven  rapidly  by  a  water-wheel  or 
steam-engine,  and  such  a  revolv- 
ing saw  would  cut  a  log  at  much 
greater  speed  than  any  form  of 
reciprocating  saw.  Since  the  in- 
vention of  the  circular  saw  our 
builders  of  sawmills  have  made 
many  improvements  in  their  great 
machines,  and  they  may  now  be 

Circular  Saw  »  J 

regarded  as  among  the  very 
largest  and  finest  wood- working  machine-tools  in 
the  world.  One  common  form  of  circular  sawing- 
machine  has  a  saw  suspended  upon  a  swinging  frame 
hung  from  the  ceiling  of  the  mill.  It  is  very  useful 
in  sawing  firewood  and  in  cutting  short  lengths  of 
wood  in  box-making  and  cabinet-work.  Another 
useful  machine  consists  of  a  table  having  a  circular 
saw  hung  just  under  the  top  of  the  table,  a  small 
segment  of  the  saw  projecting  above  it.  Such  a 
sawing-table  is  very  useful  in  every  shop,  and  we 
shall  find  them  in  every  plant  using  power  to  saw 


THE  SAW  AND   THE  SAWMILL  123 

wood.  At  first  all  circular  saws  had  teeth  cut  in  the 
edge  of  the  disc.  Now  all  large  circular  saws  have 
adjustable  teeth,  each  tooth  being  fitted  and  locked 
into  its  place  on  the  edge  of  the  disc.  The  advantage 
of  this  is  that,  if  a  tooth  is  broken,  a  new  tooth  can  be 
easily  fitted  into  its  place  and  the  saw  can  go  on  with 
its  work  without  delay. 

The  most  novel  and  certainly  the  most  interesting  of 
all  the  sa wing-machines  is  the  band-saw.  It  consists 
of  two  large  wheels  placed  in  an  iron  frame,  one  over 
the  other.  Round  the  faces  of  the  two  wheels  is 
stretched  a  thin  ribbon  or  band  of  flexible  steel,  having 
one  edge  cut  into  saw-teeth.  The  ends  of  the  band 
are  brazed  together  to  form  a  continuous  band  from 
wheel  to  wheel.  A  table  is  placed  over  the  lower 
wheel  and  under  the  upper  wheel  and  having  a  slot 
through  which  the  band  passes  from  wheel  to  wheel. 
There  are  arrangements  for  keeping  the  saw-band 
stretched  tight  at  all  times,  and  when  power  is  applied 
the  wheels  turn  rapidly,  and  the  saw-band  moves 
swiftly  in  one  continuous  direction  through  the  slot  in 
the  table.  A  block  of  wood  placed  upon  the  table  and 
pushed  against  the  flying  saw  is  quickly  cut  into  any 
shape  desired. 

For  small  work  at  home  there  are  a  number  of  very 
useful  little  sa  wing-machines  called  jig-saws  and  fret- 
saws. They  use  a  short  saw-blade  supported  in  a 
frame,  and  have  a  rapid  up  and  down  motion  over  a 
small  table.  They  are  usually  operated  by  a  foot- 
treadle,  and  any  boy  or  girl,  wishing  to  use>  a  capital 


124  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

little  sawing-machine,  will  find  it  well  worth  the  time 
and  labor  to  learn  to  use  one  of  these  fret-saws.  Such 
machines  are  very  useful  in  making  picture-frames, 
paper-pockets,  bookracks  and  other  pretty  and  handy 
things.  Such  things,  being  the  work  of  their  own 
hands,  make  the  very  best  and  most  acceptable  pres- 
ents for  their  friends. 


CHAPTEE  IX 

THE   BORERS 

SHOULD  we  ever  be  so  fortunate  as  to  see  a  real  Indian 
birch-bark  canoe,  we  might,  perhaps,  be  surprised  to 
find  that  the  thin  sheets  of  bark  covering  the  canoe  are 
stitched  together  by  strong  cord  sewn  through  small 
holes  in  the  edge  of  the  bark.  We  can  see 
the  same  thing  in  every  iron  steamship,  each 
plate  and  beam  of  metal  having  small  holes 
in  the  edge  through  which  are  secured  bits  of 
iron  called  rivets,  the  rivets  binding  plate  to 
beam  in  every  direction.  Clearly,  these  holes 
in  the  birch  bark  and  in  the  pieces  of  steel 
must  be  made  by  some  form  of  tool.  In  the 
Museum  of  Natural  History  we  shall  find 
among  the  most  ancient  of  all  tools  curious  , 

Prehistoric 

sharp-pointed  bones  or  teeth.  Evidently  the  Bone  AWI  or 
old  workmen  made  these  things  for  the 
work  of  boring  holes,  and  we  call  to-day  such  a  hole- 
maker  an  awl.  We  shall  find  an  awl  on  every  shoe- 
maker's bench  and  in  every  carpenter's  kit.  The 
carpenter's  awl  is  a  slender  rod  of  steel,  having  a  fine, 
sharp  point,  and  fitted  with  a  convenient  wooden  han- 
dle. The  shoemaker  uses  an  awl  to  make  the  holes  in 


126  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

his  leather,  the  sailmaker  uses  a  curved  awl  to  make 
the  holes  in  the  heavy  canvas  he  sews  together  for  sails, 
and  the  carpenter  uses  his  awl  to  make  a  hole  for  a 
screw.  The  awl  is  thus  a  piercer  or  hole-making  tool. 
It  is  used  Avith  a  sharp  push  or  thrust,  and  it  breaks  or 
tears  its  way  through  the  material,  whether  it  be  bark, 
a  fabric,  leather,  wood+or  thin  sheet-metal. 

In  using  an  awl  it  is  often  necessary  to  move  or  twist 
it  about  in  order  to  make  a  larger  hole.  This 
must  have  been  observed  long  ago,  for  men 
early  discovered  that  if  an  awl  had  a  cutting- 
edge  on  the  side  or  shank  of  the  tool,  it  could 
be  twisted  and  turned  about  to  make  even 
larger  and  deeper  holes  than  could  be  made 
with  a  simple  awl.  Such  a  tool  would  not  be 
a  piercer,  but  a  borer.  So,  from  the  awl,  an 
exceedingly  ancient  tool,  came  the  first  of  the 
simple  boring-tools — the  gimlet, 
ter-s  AWI  The  gimlet  is  the  smallest  and  oldest  of  a  great 
family  of  wood  and  metal-boring  tools,  and  if  we 
understand  it  we  can  easily  understand  the  larger  tools 
and  machines  that  belong  to  the  same  family.  The 
gimlet  has  a  round  steel  shank  with  a  " cross-head" 
or  handle  at  the  top.  The  lower  part  of  the  shank  is 
hollowed  out,  the  cut-out  part  having  a  spiral  or 
twisted  form,  and  called  the  pod  (from  its  resemblance 
to  a  pea-pod).  At  the  end  is  a  spiral  point  resembling 
the  tip  of  a  wood-screw,  and  called  a  gimlet-point. 
In  using  the  gimlet  the  handle  is  firmly  grasped  in  the 
hand,  and  the  sharp  point  is  pressed  into  the  wood  at 


THE  BORERS 


127 


the  exact  spot  that  marks  the  center  of  the  hole  we 
wish  to  bore  in  the  wood.  It  is  now  given  a  rotary 
motion  combined  with  a  downward  pressure.  We  see 
that  the  point  is  thus  screwed  or  pressed  spirally  into 
the  wood.  When  the  lip  of  the  pod  reaches  the  wood 
it  cuts  out  a  spiral  shaving.  As  the  gimlet  sinks 
deeper,  the  sharp  edges  of  the  pod  cut  into  the  wood 
and  shave  off  the  sides 
of  the  hole.  The 
waste  wood  is  pushed 
up  as  fast  as  it  is  cut 
off,  and  falls  out  upon 
the  surface.  When 
the  hole  is  as  deep  as 
the  tool  will  conven- 
iently go,  we  have 
only  to  reverse  the 
motion  of  the  handle, 
and  the  gimlet  easily 
rises  out  of  the  hole.  It  seems  a  simple  3. 

Electric- 
little    tool,   and   yet  we  see   how  much       wiring  Auger 

thought  has  been  expended  upon  it  to  bring  it  to  its 
present  perfection. 

Awls  and  gimlets  have  been  used  for  a  long  time  to 
prepare  the  holes  for  screws,  and  without  them  it  was 
very  difficult  to  put  a  screw  into  wood.  Then  came, 
in  quite  recent  times,  the  invention  of  the  gimlet- 
pointed  screw,  and  now  every  screw  is  its  own  gimlet 
and  bores  its  own  hole  as  it  is  screwed  into  the  wood. 
No  single  small  invention  has  proved  of  greater  value 


i. 

1.  Auger 


128  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

in  wood-working  than  this  simple  Yankee  notion  of  put- 
ting a  gimlet-point  on  every  screw,  for  it  saves  all  the 
time  and  labor  of  boring  the  holes.  One  tap  of  a  ham- 
mer on  the  screw-head  and  it  is  started,  with  one  of 
the  improved  screw-drivers  it  is  quickly  and  firmly 
screwed  "  home."  While  the  new  screw  saves  all  the 
labor  spent  on  boring  screw -holes — except  in  fine  cab- 
inet-work, etc. — and  puts  the  gimlet  out  of  commis- 
sion, we  shall  still  find  it  a  handy  tool  to  have  in  our 
tool-box. 

Closely  related  to  the  gimlet  is  the  larger  tool  called 
the  auger.  It  has  the  same  cross-head  handle  and 
straight  shank,  and  a  twisted  spiral  cuttting  portion 
ending  in  two  sharp  lips  or  chisels,  and  a  gimlet-point. 
The  auger  is  one  of  the  finest  of  all  the  boring-tools 
used  in  wood- work.  At  the  hardware  store  we  shall 
find  them  in  every  size,  from  the  great  tools  used  by 
the  car-builder,  ship-builder  and  house-builder,  down 
to  the  slender  spirals  used  by  the  piano-maker  and 
cabinet-maker,  and  the  long  augers  used  by  the  electric- 
wiring  man.  The  augers  have  a  real  beauty  of  their 
own,  for  their  graceful  spirals  are  formed  on  true  scien- 
tific principles,  and  are  the  result  of  a  correct  applica- 
tion of  means  to  end.  The  spiral  cutting-shank  of 
our  wood-boring  augers  was  invented  in  this  country 
and,  like  the  gimlet-pointed  screw,  is  an  American 
idea.  As  each  auger  bores  a  hole  of  a  fixed  diameter, 
it  is  usual  to  purchase  them  in  sets  of  a  dozen  sizes  or 
more.  They  come  in  neat  boxes,  and  are  used  with 
some  form  of  bit-stock  or  brace,  an  appliance  for  hold- 


THE  BORERS 


129 


ing  the  tool  and  turning  it  as  the  hole  is  bored.  When 
an  auger  has  its  own  handle,  it  is  a  simple  auger,  when 
several  augers  are  used  with  one  brace  or  bit-stock, 
they  are  called  auger-bits  or  simply  bits.  Auger-bits 
are  made  in  a  very  great  variety  of  forms,  and  are  used 
in  doing  a  great  variety  of  work,  there  being  over  fifty 
different  bits  or  allied  tools  used  in  wood  and  metal 
work.  The  auger  idea  has  also  been  applied  in  making 
holes  in  the  earth  and  in 
setting  iron  piles  into 
sand  in  making  founda- 
tions for  docks  and  light- 
houses. A  faucet  for 
drawing  liquids  from  a 
cask  may  have  an  auger- 
point  so  that  it  can  be 
bored  into  the  head  of 
the  cask,  making  the  hole  and  setting  the  faucet  in  one 
operation,  the  faucet  plugging  the  hole  as  soon  as  it 
is  cut  through.  All  styles  of  augers  are  now  used  in 
groups  or  gangs,  particularly  in  car-building,  and  we 
shall  no  doubt  soon  see  automatic  augers  driven  by 
compressed  air. 

Closely  related  to  the  augers  is  another  large  class  of 
boring-tools  called  drills,  and  used  in  boring  holes  in 
metals,  bone,  stone,  ivory  and  other  hard  materials. 
They  range  from  the  little  drills  used  by  the  watch- 
maker and  jeweler  in  making  holes  for  his  tiny  screws, 
to  the  great  machine-tools  used  to  bore  out  the  hub  of 
a  locomotive  driving-wheel.  Drills  bore  out  holes  by 

9 


Brace  and  Bits 


130 


TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 


the  slow-cutting  action  of  sharp  lips  or  cutting-edges 
of  the  tool,  and  all  must  be  used  in  some  form  of  car- 
rier, like  a  brace  or  similar  appliance,  for  the  drill 
must  cut  under  great  pressure  and  very  slowly.  The 
oldest  form  of  drill-carrier  was  a  simple  bow  of  wood, 
the  bowstring  being  carried  twice  round  the  drill,  the 
simple  backward  and  forward  motion  of  the  bow  caus- 
ing the  drill  to  rotate  rapidly  in  opposite  directions 
alternately.  We  have  now  far  better  tools  for  oper- 
ating drills,  the  most  common 
being  the  ratchet-drill.  It  is 
a  form  of  brace  having  a 
ratchet  and  pawl  to  operate 
the  drill.  All  metal-drills 
employ  some  form  of  carrier 
that  can  be  used  under  great 
pressure  to  force  the  drill 
continually  up  to  its  work. 
As  all  modern  steel  struc- 
tures are  put  together  with 
bolts  or  rivets,  there  must  be  vast  numbers  of  holes 
drilled  in  every  imaginable  direction  and  in  a 
great  many  sizes.  All  holes  in  moving  parts  of 
engines  and  machines  have  to  be  carefully  and  accu- 
rately drilled,  but  in  making  the  million  holes  re- 
quired in  a  ship  or  railway  bridge,  it  is  found  to  be 
cheaper  to  punch  the  holes  for  the  rivets.  This  punch- 
ing is  not  boring  at  all,  but  the  forcing  of  a  bit  of 
metal  out  of  the  plate  by  direct  pressure,  precisely  as 
we  see  the  conductor  on  the  railroad  train  punch  holes 


Ratchet-Drill 


THE  BORERS  131 

in  our  tickets.  The  conductor  uses  a  hand-punch 
weighing  less  than  a  pound,  the  shipbuilder  uses  a 
monster  hydraulic  punch  weighing  many  tons.  Drills, 
like  augers,  are  often  arranged  in  gangs,  and  many 
new  and  powerful  drills  are  now  operated  by  com- 
pressed air,  and  are  called  pneumatic  drills. 

It  sometimes  happens  that  a  hole,  when  drilled,  or 
even  when  punched,  may  require  enlarging,  or  it  may  be 
necessary  to  give 
it  a  tapering  form 
or  to  shave  down 
the  edges  of  the 
hole.  This  is 
called  reaming, 

and  is  done  with  fl  Pneumatic  DHII 

a  reamer,  a  tool 
having  either  a 
straight  or  taper 

shank  and  sharp  corners  or  edges.  It  is  used  simply 
to  shave  off  the  sides  of  a  drilled  or  punched  hole 
without  making  it  any  deeper.  In  punched  holes  the 
edges  are  sometimes  left  ragged  or  broken,  and  a 
reamer  is  used  to  shave  the  edge  of  the  hole  down 
smooth.  Rivets  and  screws  for  metals  are  often  sunk 
in  the  metal  so  as  to  be  "  countersunk,"  or  made  flush 
with  the  surface,  and  it  becomes  necessary  to  pare  off 
the  lip  of  a  drilled  or  punched  hole.  The  work  is 
done  with  a  counter-sink  bit,  a  form  of  reamer. 

The  dentist  uses  small  drills  upon  our  defective  teeth, 
and  employs  fine  tools  driven  at  a  high  speed,  for  it 


132  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

is  far  less  painful  to  have  a  tooth  bored  out  in  a  few 
seconds,  by  an  electric  drill,  than  to  suffer  half  an 
hour  while  the  dentist  chisels  out  a  hole  with  his 
unhappy  old  hand-tools. 

With  the  introduction  of  railroads  came  a  demand 
for  some  kind  of  machine  for  boring  holes  in  stone. 
For  centuries  men  had  cut  blocks  of  marble  and  granite 
out  of  quarries  by  the  use  of  a  hand-tool  called  a  drill. 
It  was  a  simple  bar  of  iron,  having  a  rounded,  double- 
faced  chisel  at  the  lower  end,  and  it  required  three 
men  to  use  it  at  even  very  slow  speed.  One  man  held 
the  drill  upright  on  the  rock  and  the  other  men,  or 
"  hammer  men,"  struck  the  top  of  the  drill  with  heavy 
sledges.  Between  each  blow  the  holder  gave  the  drill 
a  quarter  turn  in  the  hole  to  present  the  cutting-edge 
in  a  new  place.  This  work  was  slow,  laborious  and 
costly,  but  it  was  the  only  method  that  could  be  used 
in  quarrying  stone.  Before  the  invention  of  gun- 
powder, quarrying  was  all  done  by  making  drill-holes 
in  rows  close  together  and  then  driving  wedges  in  the 
holes  till  the  stone  split  off  along  the  line  of  holes. 
With  gunpowder  less  holes  were  required,  because  the 
explosion  of  powder  in  a  drill-hole  is  far  more  effective 
than  any  form  of  wedge.  When  in  our  times  the  rail- 
roads spread  over  the  country,  there  sprang  up  a  great 
demand  for  some  form  of  drill  that  would  do  more  work 
than  the  old  hand-drill.  The  railroad  must  be  level, 
and  this  meant  that  rocky  hills  must  be  cut  through 
and  mountains  tunneled,  and  all  this  demanded  an 
enormous  amount  of  drill-work  for  rock-blasting. 


THE  BORERS 


133 


Naturally,  inventors  endeavored  to  use  steam-power 
in  rock-drilling,  and  to-day  in  the  steam  or  compressed 
air  rock  drill  we  have  one  of  the  most  important  and 
valuable  of  all  modern  tools.  It  consists  of  a  steam 
cylinder  and  piston  and  its  rod,  and  to  the  rod  is  firmly 
secured  a  steel  rock- 
drill.  The  cylinder 
is  supported  upon  a 
strong  and  heavy  tri- 
pod that  may  stand 
in  any  position  and 
present  the  point  of 
the  drill  in  any  direc- 
tion. The  steam  or 
compressed  air  is  con- 
veyed to  the  cylinder 
through  a  hose,  and 
when  ready  for  work, 
it  delivers  its  tremen- 
dous, thundering 
blows  upon  the  rock  in 


s.s. 


Pneumatic  Rock-drill 


rapid  succession.  The 
man  controlling  the 
machine  regulates  the  speed  and  pressure  of  the  blows, 
the  machine  automatically  turning  the  drill  as  it  sinks 
into  the  rock  and  continuing  its  terrific  labor  as  long 
as  the  supply  of  steam  or  compressed  air  is  maintained. 
This  grand  tool  has  done  more  to  develop  the  mineral 
wealth  of  our  country  than  any  other  tool  or  machine. 
It  has  enabled  us  to  sink  deep  mines  and  to  dig  for 


134  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

miles  through  the  mountains.  It  has  discovered  and 
brought  to  the  surface  oil,  gas,  and  water,  has  given 
us  a  wonderful  wealth  of  beautiful  marbles  and  build- 
ing stones,  and  has  led  the  railroads  over  or  through 
the  highest  mountains.  If  we  were  to  select  any  one 
tool  that  should  stand  as  distinctly  the  modern  tool, 
more  universally  useful  than  any  other,  it  would  be 
the  power  rock-drill. 

The  drills  used  in  sinking  deep  holes  for  oil,  gas  or 
water  are  operated  by  steam-power  in  tall  machines 
resembling  in  appearance  a  pile-driver,  and  called  a 
derrick.  For  very  deep  wells,  and  \vherever  it  is  neces- 
sary to  ascertain  the  character  of  the  rock  hundreds  of 
feet  below  the  surface,  another  and  most  interesting 
form  of  drill  is  employed.  This  is  the  diamond  rock- 
drill,  a  power- tool  that  is  a  true  boring-tool,  for  it 
cuts  a  circle  in  the  stone,  leaving  the  center,  or  core, 
'untouched.  The  drilling-tool  is  a  steel  tube,  open  at 
the  lower  end,  the  circular  edge  being  armed  with 
cheap,  yet  very  hard,  diamonds.  The  drill  is  placed 
upright  upon  the  rock  to  be  bored,  and  is  operated  by 
turning  it  round  precisely  as  if  it  were  a  diamond-shod 
auger.  The  intensely  hard  diamonds  cut  a  ring  in  the 
rock,  and  as  the  tool  cuts  its  way  downward,  the  blank 
center  remains  standing  in  the  middle  of  the  hole  or 
well.  By  removing  the  drill  and  using  the  right  tools, 
this  stone  core  can  be  broken  off  and  hauled  up  to  the 
surface.  The  core  then  shows  exactly  the  kind  and 
character  of  the  rock  cut  by  the  drill,  even  if  the  drill 
has  been  at  work  a  hundred  feet  under  ground.  The 


THE  BORERS 


135 


removal  of  the  core  enlarges  the  well  to  its  full  size. 
No  tool  ever  used  in  working  underground  has  given 
us  such  useful  information  concerning  the  rocky  in- 
terior of  the  earth  as  this  diamond  drill,  and  the  curi- 
ous stone  records  of  its  work  have  been  preserved  as 
stone  books,  telling  us  the  secrets  of  the  crust  of  the 
world.  Some  of  these 
stone  cores  have  led  to 
the  discovery  of  valu- 
able minerals  hidden 
deep  in  the  earth,  and 
that  might  never  have 
been  found  without 
the  aid  of  the  diamond 
drill. 

Within  the  past  few 
years  a  remarkable  im- 
provement has  been 
made  in  the  drills  used  to  bore  metals.  This  is  the 
pneumatic  drill,  a  small  and  powerful  drill  operated 
by  compressed  air.  It  works  at  a  high  speed,  and  as 
it  can  be  used  in  any  position  within  the  limits  of  its 
air  hose,  it  is  a  most  useful  and  valuable  tool  in  shops 
and  shipyards  and  wherever  metal-boring  tools  are 
employed.  Like  the  pneumatic  hammer,  it  is  destined 
to  be  one  of  the  most  universal  of  all  small  power- 
tools. 


Eskimo  Bow-drill 


OHAPTEK  X 

THE  ABRADERS  AND   GRINDERS 

ANY  tool  that  has  been  well  used,  and  has  a  wooden 
handle,  will  show  that  it  has  been  used,  by  the  polish 
that  appears  upon  the  handle.  A  new  hammer  has  a 
smooth,  but  dull  handle;  an  old  hammer  may  show 
a  fine  polish.  This  was,  no  doubt,  observed  centuries 
ago,  for  we  find  in  museums  ancient  arms  and  tools 
that  are  highly  polished.  At  first  this  might  have  been 
the  result  of  handling  and  long  use.  Then,  perhaps, 
some  more  thoughtful  huntsman  decided  that  if  the 
mere  rubbing  of  his  hands  upon  the  bow  or  spear  would 
polish  the  wood,  he  could  rub  it  all  over  and  give  the 
whole  surface  this  attractive  polish.  Then  he  discov- 
ered that  such  polishing  could  be  hastened  by  using 
rough  material  in  place  of  his  bare  hand.  The  rough 
skin  of  a  fish,  when  dried,  would  be  a  good  polisher,  and 
besides  doing  better  work,  would  save  his  own  hands 
from  wear.  The  next  step  would  be  to  wrap  the  fish- 
skin  round  a  stick  and  use  the  stick  as  a  handle  for  the 
polisher.  It  was  from  some  such  experiment  as  this 
with  dried  fish-skins  that  we  obtained  one  of  the  most 
common  of  all  tools — the  file. 

A  file  is  an  abrading  tool  or  surface-finishing  tool. 
It  is  a  steel  tool,  made  in  many  forms,  the  surface  of 


THE  ABRADERS  AND   GRINDERS  137 

the  steel  being  cut  or  raised  into  small  ridges  or  burrs 
of  uniform  size,  and  arranged  in  rows  or  groups  side 
by  side.  It  is  the  universal  finishing-tool,  and  "to 
file  to  shape  ' '  means  to  use  a  file  to  bring  a  piece  of 
wood  or  metal  to  a  true  plane,  or  to  the  exact  form  of 
the  pattern.  In  technical  schools  the  first  lessons  given 
to  the  students  are  in  the  use  of  the  file,  as  it  is  an  ex- 
tremely delicate  tool,  and  to  use  a  file  with  precision 
and  skill  is  an  excellent  training  for  the  hand  and  eye. 

There  are  in  use  ^^         

in  the  arts,  at  least 

two  thousand  dif-     2  . 

ferent     kinds     of 

files,    varying    in     1  .^^^.^^ju^  ..    t 

their       Shape       and  1.  Half-round  Rasp  File     2.  Four-square  File 

3.  Round  Double  Cut  File 

size,  and  the  man- 
ner in  which  the  teeth  are  arranged.  Three  points 
will  be  found  in  all  files,  these  points  being  their 
length,  measuring  from  the  end  of  the  file  to  the  tang 
(that  portion  inserted  in  the  handle),  their  shape,  and 
the  manner  in  which  the  file  is  cut,  or  the  arrange- 
ment of  the  cutting  teeth.  For  instance,  a  file  may  be 
four,  five,  ten  or  more  inches  long;  it  may  be  of  square 
section,  triangular,  round  or  half  round,  or  may  re- 
semble a  knife-edge  or  be  square  with  one  side  convex, 
or  may  resemble  a  low  pyramid;  and  it  may  have  single 
detached  teeth,  like  a  rasp,  or  it  may  have  fine  teeth 
arranged  in  parallel  lines  or  arranged  in  double  lines 
crossing  each  other.  A  file  may  be  also  cut  on  three 
sides  with  the  fourth  side  blank  or  i  c  safe. ' ' 


138  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

If  we  take  up  any  file  we  shall  find  that  it  includes 
these  three  points — length,  shape,  and  style  of  cut. 
The  large  files,  with  single,  detached  teeth,  are  said  to 
be  of  "  rasp  cut."  Smaller  and  finer  files  are  single- 
cut  or  doable-cut,  and  each  of  these  rasp,  single,  and 
double-cuts  has  various  degrees  of  fineness.  The 
length  and  shape  depend  entirely  upon  the  work  to 
be  done  with  any  particular  file,  and  so  universal  is 
the  use  of  files  and  rasps  in  every  trade,  that  we  are 
simply  lost  in  wonder  at  their  infinite  variety.  A 
mere  list  of  all  the  kinds  would  fill  many  pages,  and 
it  would  certainly  be  quite  as  dull  reading  as  a  trade- 
catalogue. 

It  is  clear  that  in  the  use  of  files  we  have  only  to 
consider  the  character  of  the  work  to  be  done  and  the 
nature  of  the  material  to  be  filed,  to  be  able,  with  a 
little  practice,  to  select  just  the  right  kind  of  a  file  for 
our  purpose.  A  jeweler  requires  small,  fine-cut  files, 
the  dentist,  very  fine-cut  files  of  a  variety  of  shapes. 
A  locksmith  fitting  a  key  wants  a  rather  coarse  single 
or  double-cut  file  of  the  exact  shape  to  fit  the  work, 
whether  it  be  to  trim  off  a  tiny  shaving  of  brass  or  to 
cut  a  blank  key  to  fit  a  lock.  A  horseshber  wants  a 
big,  coarse  rasp  for  his  work,  and  the  cabinet-maker 
wants  his  special  files  to  fit  his  work.  In  the  kitchen 
we  see  the  nutmeg-grater  and  the  horseradish-grater, 
and  recognize  that  they,  too,  are  abraders  and  raspers. 

A  sheet  of  stiff  paper,  painted  with  hot  glue  and 
then  lightly  sprinkled  with  fine,  hard,  beach  sand,  gives 
us  an  admirable  material  for  smoothing  and  polishing. 


THE  ABRADERS  AND  GRINDERS  139 

When  the  hot  glue  cools  it  hardens,  and  holds  the  tiny 
grains  of  sand,  and  each  bit  of  hard  stone  acts  as  a 
file  tooth.  We  call  such  prepared  paper  sandpaper, 
and  by  using  sand  of  different  degrees  of  fineness,  we 
can  make  sandpaper  with  fine  teeth  or  coarse  teeth. 
We  can  also  use  other  materials  upon  paper  as  abra- 
dants,  such  as  powdered  glass,  corundrum,  emery  and 
other  hard,  fine-grained  powders.  Wooden  rods  and 
sticks  are  also  covered  with  glue  and  sprinkled  with 
sand  or  emery  to  make  polishing-sticks.  Loose  emery, 
rouge  and  other  materials  are  also  used  with  a  piece  of 
cloth  in  polishing  glass  and  metals. 

The  most  useful  of  all  these  abrading  and  polishing 
appliances  is  the  emery-wheel.  A  wheel  covered  with 
emery-paper  and  placed  in  a  lathe  makes  at  once  a  cir- 
cular abrading-tool  of  great  value  in  polishing  metals. 
A  still  better  plan  is  to  make  a  wheel  of  some  mate- 
rial that  will  hold  emery,  corundrum  or  other  abra- 
dants  all  through  its  substance.  Then,  as  fast  as  it  is 
worn  out,  new,  fresh  grinding-surfaces  will  be  exposed. 
Such  emery-wheels  are  now  in  universal  use  in  every 
shop  where  metals  are  to  be  filed,  smoothed  or  pol- 
ished. They  are  used  also  to  give  shape  to  pieces  of 
metal,  it  being  found  as  easy  to  grind  a  block  of  metal 
to  the  right  form  as  to  plane  it  or  to  mill  it  in  a  milling 
machine.  Such  machines  are  called  grinding-machines, 
because  they  grind  down  metals  to  shape  by  means 
of  swiftly  moving  abrading- wheels. 

A  great  variety  of  rubbers,  grinders,  and  polishers 
are  used  to  polish  plate  glass,  buttons,  and  the  count- 


140 


TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 


less  small  things  made  of  brass,  copper  and  glass,  and 
that  we  use  in  every  trade  and  in  all  our  homes.  Very 
hard  grinding-wheels  are  used  to  cut  glass  into  the 
beautiful  forms  we  call  "  cut  glass. "  Yery  soft  wheels 
coated  with  rouge  are  used  to  polish  glassware  and 
silver.  Yery  delicate  and  beautiful  decorations  are 

also  applied  to  glassware  by 
lightly  touching  the  glass  to 
swiftly  moving  grinding- 
wheels.  Window  glass  is  often 
depolished  by  grinding  and 
rubbing  with  sand.  Such  par- 
tially opaque  glass  is  called 
ground  glass. 

The  most  interesting  ma- 
chine used  in  grinding  and 
decorating  glass  is  the  sand- 
blast. This  machine  employs 
a  blast  of  air  to  drive  a  stream 
of  fine  sand  against  a  sheet 
of  glass.  Every  tiny  speck  of 

sand  thus  violently  driven  acts  as  a  file  to  crack  and 
roughen  the  surface,  and  as  many  thousand  grains  of 
sand  strike  every  minute  the  glass  is  quickly  depol- 
ished or  made  dull  like  common  ground  glass.  The 
sand-blast  is  also  used  to  decorate  silverware.  A  thin 
sheet  of  cloth  or  paper  spread  over  the  glass  under  the 
sand-blast,  checks  the  operation,  and  the  sand  makes 
no  mark.  Thus  the  shape  of  the  paper  maybe  used  as 
a  pattern  in  decorating  glass  or  silver.  The  parts  under 


Surface-grinding  Machine 


THE  ABRADE RS  AND  GRINDERS 

the  paper  will  remain  polished  and  the  parts  not  covered 
by  the  paper  will  be  dulled  or  matted,  and  the  contrast 
between  the  two  may  be  a  very  beautiful  form  of 
decoration. 

The  abradants  have  still  another  use.  A  grindstone 
is  a  grinding- wheel,  and  we  use  it  to  grind  away  a 
part  of  the  blade  of  a  knife  and  give  it  a  fine,  sharp 
cutting-edge.  There  are  also  many  forms  of  fine  sand- 
stones or  sharpening- stones  that,  with  the  aid  of  a  little 
oil  or  water,  enable  us  to  keep  our  tools  sharp.  Even 
the  scissors-grinder  at  the  door  may  remind  us  that 
abrading- wheels  and  sharpening-stones,  and  even  razor 
strops,  all  sprang  from  the  old  dried  fish-skin  that 
some  hunter  once  used  to  polish  his  spear  handle. 

One  of  the  largest  and  most  useful  of  the  abrading- 
machines  is  the  stone  or  marble-saw.  In  the  marblo 
yard  we  shall  see  huge  blocks  of  marble  being  sawn 
up  into  thin  slabs.  We  see  a  wooden  frame  holding  a 
number  of  long  saws,  swinging  slowly  backward  and 
forward  over  the  marble.  At  first  we  might  imagine 
that  this  was  a  real  sawing-machine.  Then  we  ob- 
serve that  the  man  in  charge  of  the  machine  keeps  put- 
ting sand  on  the  marble,  while  tiny  streams  of  water 
flow  over  the  white  block.  The  sand-saw  is  not  a  saw 
having  cutting-teeth  like  a  wood-saw.  The  cutting  of 
the  marble  is  done  by  the  sand  that  is  continually 
"  fed  "  to  the  thin  strips  of  iron  called  the  saws.  The 
water  sweeps  the  sand  into  the  cut  and  keeps  the  saws 
cool,  otherwise  the  strips  of  iron  would  soon  grow  hot 
under  the  friction.  The  machine  we  see  is  a  giant 


14:2  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

sand-file,  the  iron  bands  merely  serving  to  keep  the 
sand  in  motion  and  causing  it  to  file  away  the  hard 
marble.  From  the  stone- saw  the  thin  slabs  of  marble 
go  to  great  tables,  where  swiftly  moving  arms  pro- 
vided with  brushes  or  other  appliances  for  holding 
abradants  glide  over  the  marble  to  give  it  the  beauti- 
ful polish  we  see  in  every  marble  washstand,  counter, 
table,  and  mural  tablet. 


OHAPTEB  XI 

WOMAN'S  ANCIENT  TOOLS 

THREE  things  mankind  must  have:  food  to  eat,  a 
roof  for  shelter,  and  clothing  for  protection  against 
the  weather.  It  was  the  demand  for  food  and  shelter 
that  led  to  the  invention  of  many  tools.  The  demand 
for  clothing  led  to  still  other  tools.  The  first  clothing 
was  stolen  from  the  backs  of  animals.  The  sheep  wore 
a  thick,  warm  coat,  and  men  did  not  hesitate  to  kill 
the  sheep  and  strip  off  the  skin  and  use  it  as  a  garment. 
Of  course,  a  sheepskin  on  a  man  would  be  a  pretty 
poor  fit,  and  some  woman  picked  up  a  thorn  or  a  sharp 
stick  and  used  it  to  pin  pieces  of  sheepskin  together 
to  make  some  rude  kind  of  a  garment  that  would  be 
comfortable  and  look  more  or  less  pretty.  Then  came 
the  awl,  and  with  the  awl  came  the  invention  of  stitch- 
ing or  sewing. 

Men  and  women  for  centuries  thus  used  the  skins  of 
animals  as  materials  for  garments.  Invention  and  im- 
provement move  slowly,  and  centuries  may  have  passed 
before  they  recognized  that  it  was  a  very  poor  plan  to 
kill  a  sheep  for  his  skin,  when  the  wool  or  fleece  could 
be  cut  off  each  spring  and  still  keep  the  sheep  alive. 
A  dead  sheep  would  give  one  small  skin,  a  live  sheep 


TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 


would  give  wool  once  a  year  for  several  years,  besides 
a  new  lamb  or  another  sheep.  Such  a  simple  idea  as 
this  must  have  completely  changed  the  whole  business 
of  making  clothes,  and  we  know  that  in  time  it  led  to 


Indian  Woman  Weaving 

the  invention  of  one  of  the  oldest  of  old  tools — the 
distaff. 

A  flock  of  wool  from  a  sheep's  back,  or  a  boll  of 
cotton  gathered  from  a  cotton  plant,  seem  very  un- 
promising materials  for  a  coat.  Pull  the  soft  wool  or 
fluffy  cotton  out  in  the  fingers,  giving  it  a  twist  as  you 
pull,  and  you  make  a  discovery.  It  " threads"  or 
spins.  With  a  little  practice  any  material,  like  wool, 
cotton,  or  flax,  can  be  twisted  and  drawn  out  into  a 


WOMAN'S  ANCIENT  TOOLS 


145 


thread  called  yarn.  "Women  discovered  this  centuries 
ago,  and  some  one  invented  a  tool  with  which  it  was 
possible  to  spin  long,  continuous  yarns  or  threads.  It 
was  a  short,  thick  stick,  split  at  one  end  and  held 
under  the  arm, 
and  was  called  a 
distaff.  The  bunch 
of  loose  wool  was 
caught  in  the  cleft 
stick  and  firmly 
held,  and  the  spin- 
ner pulled  it  out, 
twisting  it  be- 
tween the  fingers 
with  a  twirling 
mot  ion,  and 
wound  it  on  a 
spindle  or  spool, 
the  weight  of  the 
spool  helping  to 
stretch  out  the 
twisted  wool. 
This,  the  oldest 
form  of  yarn  spin- 
ner, has  been  used 
for  uncounted 

centuries,  and  was  in  general  use  up  to  our  own  colo- 
nial times. 

The  only  improvement  made  on  the  distaff  was  the 
spinning-wheel,  and  to-day  in  many  an  old  New  Eng- 
10 


14:6  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

land  home  you  can  still  see  the  spinning-wheel  once 
used  by  our  great-great-grandmothers,  for  the  colo- 
nial women  were  all  famous  spinners  of  yarn.  The 
Continental  soldiers  often  wore  "  home-spun,"  mean- 
ing garments  made  from  cloth  that  was  first  spun  into 
yarn  at  home  by  wife  and  mother. 

Fortunately,  the  spinning-wheel  has  been  replaced 
by  spinning-machines,  and  now  wool,  flax  and  cotton 
are  all  spun  into  yarns,  ready  for  the  loom,  by  the  most 
complex  and  wonderful  machinery,  and  women  are  for- 
ever free  from  all  the  toil  of  spinning. 

We  cannot  even  imagine  how  long  ago  women  began 
to  use  the  distaff,  because  we  can  readily  understand 
that  even  before  it  was  invented,  women  and  men  had 
learned  to  weave  grass,  straw  and  slender  rods  of  wil- 
low into  baskets,  and  the  demand  for  clothing  must 
have  suggested  the  weaving  of  yarn  into  cloth,  or  the 
braiding  and  knitting  of  yarn  into  stockings  and  other 
coverings  for  the  head,  the  hands  or  the  feet.  These 
things  are  all  lost  in  the  dim,  far-away  past,  of  which 
we  have  no  records  or  even  faint  memory  or  tradition. 
Somehow,  somewhere,  plaiting,  braiding,  knitting,  and 
weaving  grew  up  among  the  people,  and  the  first 
fabrics  or  cloths  were  made.  The  thorn  suggested  the 
pin,  and  the  awl  suggested  sewing,  and  so  from  these 
and  the  fabrics  came  clothing.  Then,  at  last,  came 
the  greatest  invention  of  all — the  needle.  The  awl 
made  holes  in  the  fabrics,  but  the  thread  had  to  be  put 
through  the  hole  afterwards.  The  needle  was  an  im- 
proved awl,  with  an  eye.  A  thread  could  be  passed 


WOMAN'S  ANCIENT  TOOLS  147 

through  the  eye,  and  then  the  sewer  had  a  portable 
thread-carrying  awl  or  needle,  and  the  real  art  of  sew- 
ing began. 

Knitting,  plaiting  and  braiding,  combined  with  sew- 
ing, made  it  possible  to  make  real  cloth,  but  basket- 
weaving,  a  hand  labor,  no  doubt  suggested  the  last 
and  best  of  all  fabric-making  machines — the  loom.  In 
museums  where  colonial  relics  are  preserved  we  can 
sometimes  see  a  strange  wooden  machine  with  a  great 
frame,  a  roller  and  a  curious  spool,  sharp  at  each  end, 
and  called  a  shuttle.  We  see  in  the  machine  many 
threads  of  yarn  stretched  side  by  side  from  the  back  to 
the  front  of  the  machine.  These  threads  may  be,  let 
us  say,  all  white.  At  the  front  of  the  machine  is  a 
curious  device  looking  like  a  huge  double  comb,  the 
threads  all  passing  through  it.  The  shuttle  may  be 
lying  loose  in  the  loom  and  wound  with  a  single  black 
thread.  The  operation  of  the  machine  is  very  simple. 
By  a  movement  of  a  foot-treadle,  one-half  of  all  the 
parallel  white  threads  extending  from  the  back  of  the 
loom,  and  called  the  warp,  are  raised  or  separated  from 
the  others,  every  alternate  thread  being  thus  lifted 
above  the  others.  Then  through  this  space  between 
the  two  sets  of  threads  the  weaver  throws  the  shut- 
tle with  its  black  thread,  called  the  weft  or  woof.  The 
woof  unwinds  and  lies  between  the  two  sets,  or  cross- 
wise of  the  warp-threads.  The  woof  is  pressed  back 
close  to  the  last  thread  delivered  by  the  shuttle.  The 
weaver  then  raises  the  other  group  of  alternate  threads 
and  the  shuttle  is  thrown  back  again  on  its  return 


148  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

journey.  In  this  manner  the  fabric  is  slowly  woven, 
and  as  the  warp  is  white  and  the  weft  black,  the  result 
will  be  a  mixed  black  and  white,  or  gray  fabric.  The 
fabric,  as  fast  as  woven,  is  wound  upon  the  cloth  roll 
in  front  of  the  loom. 

To  show  how  old  the  loom  is  we  have  only  to  recall 
how  many  words  in  our  language  are  but  names  of  the 
parts  of  a  loom  or  terms  used  in  weaving. 

With  the  application  of  power  to  the  loom,  in  the 
eighteenth  century,  there  sprang  up  in  our  country 
and  Europe  the  great  and  prosperous  business  of 
weaving,  giving  employment  to  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands of  people,  and  making  it  possible  for  all  the 
people  to  have  beautiful  cloths  for  garments  at  very 
low  cost.  A  very  great  number  of  improvements  have 
been  made  in  the  loom,  so  that  now  it  bears  very  little 
resemblance  to  the  original  hand-loom.  One  of  the 
greatest  of  these  improvements  was  made  by  Jacquard 
in  France  in  1801.  Jacquard's  improvement  consists 
of  a  most  ingenious  system  of  perforated  cards,  so 
arranged  that  one  card  at  a  time  was  placed  in  the 
loom  just  as  the  shuttle  was  thrown.  The  perforations 
of  the  cards,  through  suitable  machinery,  controlled 
the  number  of  yarns  to  be  raised  or  lowered  as  the 
shuttle  passed.  As  each  card  had  a  different  set  of 
perforations,  the  arrangement  of  the  warp-threads 
was  changed  at  every  flight  of  the  shuttle,  and,  as  a 
result,  a  figured  pattern  was  woven  in  the  fabric. 
Thus,  by  this  remarkable  invention,  the  loom  itself 
automatically  produced  any  pattern  marked  by  the 


WOMAN'S  ANCIENT  TOOLS  149 

perforations  in  the  cards.  It  is  not  possible  here  to 
examine  all  the  countless  additions  and  improvements 
that  have  been  made  to  the  loom  in  this  and  other 
countries  within  the  past  one  hundred  years.  We 
can  only  recognize  that  they  have  made  the  power- 
loom  one  of  the  most  important  of  all  modern  machines. 
Knitting  has  been  for  centuries  a  handicraft  for 
women,  and  yet  now  very  few  women  and  girls  can 
knit,  for  we  have  another  fabric-making  machine — the 
knitter. 

The  old  tool,  the  needle,  is  still  used,  and  will, 
no  doubt,  always  be  used.  It  is  the  one  household 
hand-tool  that  every  girl  and  woman  should  be 
able  to  use  with  skill,  and  yet  this  tool  also  has  been 
changed  to  a  power-tool.  For  centuries  the  eye  of  the 
needle  has  been  at  the  top  or  blank  end,  tvhich  is  the 
proper  place  for  it  in  hand-sewing.  The  simple  idea 
of  placing  the  eye  near  the  point  made  the  sewing- 
machine  practicable,  and  to-day  the  larger  part  of  all 
sewing  is  done  at  home  or  in  factories  on  sewing- 
machines. 

These  machines — the  spinning-machine,  the  power- 
loom,  the  knitter,  and  the  sewing-machine — have  taken 
a  grievous  burden  from  the  shoulders  of  women.  To- 
day beautiful  cloths  and  garments  are  cheaper  than 
ever  before,  and  millions  of  women  have  been  re- 
leased from  dull  and  monotonous  labor,  and  left  at  lib- 
erty to  do  better  and  finer  work  in  other  directions. 
No  girl  can  afford  to  say  that  she  cannot  use  a  needle 
or  a  darning-needle.  It  is  a  good  and  womanly  thing 


150  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

to  be  able  to  sew  and  to  make  a  garment.  Even  darn- 
ing and  patching  are  little  arts  of  which  every  girl 
should  be  mistress.  A  girl  may  well  say  she  would 
rather  darn  her  old  stockings  than  run  in  debt  for  a 
new  pair. 


CHAPTEE  XII. 

SOME    CLOSING    SUGGESTIONS    . 

WE  have  now  examined  some  of  the  great  tools  used 
in  the  work  of  the  world.  We  have  seen  that  they  are 
like  milestones,  marking  the  progress  of  the  human 
race.  Up  to  our  own  times  all  tools  were  heavy, 
clumsy,  and  inefficient.  Now  all  tools  made  in  our 
own  country  are  wonderfully  light,  strong,  convenient 
and  effective.  Many  are  even  beautiful  as  well  as  use- 
ful. They  do  the  work  for  which  they  are  designed  in 
the  quickest,  chea'pest  and  best  w'ay,  and  any  young 
man  or  woman  may  be  glad  and  proud  to  use  them, 
for  they  are  the  best  tools  in  the  world.  They  are 
constructed  upon  scientific  principles,  and  are  effective 
because  scientifically  adapted  to  their  work.  More- 
over, they  are  marked  by  a  wonderful  ingenuity,  a 
more  wonderful  originality.  The  Englishman,  the 
German  and  the  Frenchman  also  make  fine  tools  and 
splendid  machines,  yet  all  three  are  ever  ready  to  see 
the  last  new  American  tool,  and,  if  it  be  good,  to  adapt 
it  at  once  to  their  own  trades  and  manufactures. 

We  have  also  seen  that  all  the  hand -tools  have  been 
slowly  merged  into  machines  and  that  all  machines  are 
in  reality  greater  tools.  The  needle  has  been  trans- 


152  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

formed  into  the  sewing-machine,  the  sickle  has  become 
a  harvesting-machine,  and  the  plane  has  grown  into 
the  planer.  As  for  the  knife,  it  is  in  a  hundred  ma- 
chines, and  the  file,  the  saw,  and  the  gimlet  all  live  in 
great  power-saws,  files  and  borers.  Then,  too,  some 
hand-tools  have  disappeared  and  have  been  replaced 
by  machines.  Not  a  woman  in  all  the  land  holds  a 
distaff  or  whirls  a  spinning-wheel,  because  all  the  work 
of  spinning  yarn  for  weaving  is  noAV  done  in  the  spin- 
ning-mills. Not  a  farmer  in  the  land  uses  a  sickle  to 
gather  his  wheat.  Not  a  single  laborer  drags  up  and 
down  the  heavy  pit-saw  used  a  hundred  years  ago. 
Millions  of  men  and  women  have  been  released  from 
hard  and  ill-paid  labor,  and  to-day  their  labor  is  per- 
formed by  machines.  Now,  this  might  lead  us  to 
think  that,  because  so  much  of  the  work  of  the  world 
is  performed  by  machines,  therefore,  you  and  I  need 
not  use  hand-tools  at  all. 

That  would  be  a  strange  mistake.  The  great  and 
wonderful  multiplication  of  machines  does  not  mean 
that  hand  tools  are  not  or  need  not  be  used.  There 
are  more  and  better  hand-tools  in  the  stores  to-day 
than  ever  before,  and  no  young  man  or  woman  can 
afford  to  say  that  he  or  she  has  no  tools  and  does  not 
know  how  to  use  them.  We  all  use  tools  of  some 
kind  every  day  in  our  lives,  and  the  greater  our  skill 
in  their  use  the  greater  our  ability  to  do  good  work. 

There  is  that  old  tool  the  pen.  Up  to  quite  recent 
times  every  pen  was  cut  out  of  a  quill  plucked  from 
a  dead  goose.  Every  man  had  to  have  a  pocket-knife 


SOME  CLOSING  SUGGESTIONS  153 

or  i  f  pen-knife ' '  to  keep  his  quill  pens  properly  cut. 
Now  the  pen  is  a  wonderfully  fine  piece  of  steel  or 
gold,  and  even  the  steel  pen  has  been  improved,  and 
we  have  the  self -inking  fountain  pen.  On  the  desk  is 
a  rubber  stamp  to  save  pen  labor.  It  is  a  printer  or 
printing-tool,  and  it  stands  for  a  grand  machine — the 
printing-press.  Within  the  past  few  years  still  an- 
other printing-machine  has  been  invented — the  type- 
writer. 

We  go  to  walk  and  take  a  wonderful  new  tool  with 
us,  and  record  the  scenes  we  see  with  a  camera.  In 
the  store  we  see  a  cash-register  counting  and  recording 
money.  In  the  bank  we  see  strange  machines  that 
will  do  endless  sums  in  arithmetic  and  never  make  a 
mistake.  In  the  telegraph  office  we  hear  the  chatter 
of  that  marvelous  tool — the  sounder — or  we  listen  to 
the  mystic  voices  that  come  to  our  ears  through  that 
strange  new  machine,  the  telephone.  Even  as  we  walk 
the  streets  we  see  the  electric  car  and  the  automobile, 
machines  full  of  wonderful  possibilities  in  the  future. 
Everywhere  are  tools  and  machines  to  save  labor,  to  do 
work  and  contribute  to  the  comfort  and  pleasure  of  all 
the  people.  What,  then,  is  our  duty  ?  It  is  to  see,  to 
study,  to  understand  and  to  use  these  grand  things  to 
the  end  that  the  world  shall  be  better  for  our  knowl- 
edge and  our  skill  with  tools. 

We  may  not,  just  now,  stop  to  examine  every  tool 
and  machine,  yet  with  the  knowledge  already  gained 
we  can  go  on  and  see  and  admire  still  other  machines 
not  already  mentioned.  There  are  the  great  motors, 


154  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

the  self  movers,  the  turbine,  the  steam-boiler  and 
steam-engine,  the  traveling  engines,  the  locomotive 
and  the  marine  engine.  Then  there  are  the  trans- 
formers and  conveyers  of  power,  the  dynamo  and  the 
electric  motors.  There  is  the  great  and  notable  com- 
pany of  the  printing-presses  and  their  relatives,  the 
composing-machines.  There  are  the  new  strange 
machines  for  handling  materials,  the  car-loaders  and 
unloaders,  the  steam-shovels  and  the  wire  transport 
machines  and  the  elevators  and  conveyers  of  coal 
and  grain.  Then,  in  shops  and  factories,  we  shall 
see  box-making  machines*  chain-making  machines, 
laundry-machines,  stamping  and  pressing-machines, 
traveling-cranes  and  hoisting-machines.  Everywhere 
machines  in  endless  variety,  of  tremendous  power  and 
wonderful  ingenuity.  Our  studies  of  tools  enable  us 
to  comprehend,  and  certainly  lead  us  to  admire  this 
vast  array  of  strange,  new  and  wonderful  things,  that 
so  marvelously  contribute  to  our  comfort  and  safety, 
that  make  life  to-day  so  well  worth  living. 

Within  the  past  few  years  there  has  grown  up 
among  the  people  of  our  country  a  desire  to  own  and 
preserve  fine  examples  of  the  hand-made  silverware, 
furniture,  rugs,  embroidery,  and  pottery  made  by  the 
skillful  craftsmen  of  colonial  times.  Every  old  house 
in  New  England  and  Virginia  has  been  searched,  and 
still  the  demand  far  exceeds  the  supply.  This  has 
inspired  hundreds  of  young  men  and  women  to  en 
deavor  to  supply  this  demand  for  hand-made  things 
by  making  new  rugs,  tables,  chairs,  embroidered  table- 


SOME  CLOSING  SUGGESTIONS  155 

linen,  baskets,  jewelry,  silverware,  and  pottery  made 
from  original  designs  and  with  hand-tools.  Scores  of 
little  shops  are  springing  up  all  over  our  country, 
where  these  young  men  and  women  make  and  sell  the 
products  of  their  own  skill  in  the  handicrafts. 

Here  we  see  still  another  reason  why  every  young 
man  and  woman  should  know  how  to  use  hand-tools. 
Skill  in  the  use  of  such  tools,  combined  with  an  artis- 
tic education,  opens  the  way  to  new  and  profitable 
employments.  This  revival  of  the  handicrafts  teaches 
even  more ;  for,  while  we  may  not  use  tools,  the  knowl- 
edge of  what  tools  are  and  how  they  are  used  will 
add  greatly  to  our  appreciation  and  understanding  of 
the  beauty  and  value  of  these  new  things  made  with 
old  tools. 

Lastly,  we  should,  every  one  of  us,  be  able  to  own 
and  use  a  few  good  hand-tools.  In  every  home  there 
should  be  some  place  for  tools.  A  drawer  or  box  will 
answer,  but  the  best  plan  is  to  have  some  kind  of 
closet  or  cabinet  with  doors  and  a  lock.  Inside  there 
should  be  hooks  or  nails  on  which  the  tools  may  be 
hung  up  in  a  safe  place  and  yet  within  easy  reach.  There 
should  also  be  a  shelf  or  two  for  the  heavy  tools  like 
the  plane.  A  few  boxes  for  small  things,  like  loose 
nails  or  screws,  should  also  be  provided.  Now, 
whether  such  a  tool-closet  be  large  or  small,  whether 
it  hold  few  or  many  tools,  it  should  always  contain 
certain  convenient  things  that  are  used  with  all  tools. 

The  first  of  these  is  the  level.  At  the  hardware  store 
we  may  see  many  levels  of  different  sizes  and  styles. 


156  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

The  common  carpenter's  level,  which  is  a  very  useful 
form,  consists  of  a  bar  of  wood  containing  a  glass  tube 
imbedded  in  the  wood,  the  tube  being  filled  with  a 
liquid.  In  this  liquid  we  see  a  shining  bubble  of  air 
imprisoned  in  the  tube.  Placing  the  level  on  a  table, 
we  observe  that  the  most  minute  and  delicate  vertical 
movement  of  one  end  of  the  level  causes  the  bubble  to 
glide  from  side  to  side  along  the  tube.  We  soon  dis- 
cover that  orily  when  the  level  is  resting  on  a  true 
plane,  with  no  part  higher  than  any  other,  that  the  bub- 
ble rests  quietly  at  the  exact  middle  of  the  tube.  The 
level  appears  to  have  been  known  to  the  ancients,  and 
we  see  that  by  its  aid  all  buildings  and  structures  ever 
built  were  made  true  and  level.  We  plane  a  board  on 
edge  and  rest  the  level  upon  it  to  prove  if  our  work  be 
true  and  level.  If  the  place  on  which  the  board  rests 
be  level  (and  we  can  prove  that)  and  the  bubble  in  the 
level  remains  in  the  center  when  the  level  rests  upon 
it,  then  our  work  is  right.  So  with  the  making  of 
everything,  so  even  with  the  hanging  of  a  picture,  let 
us  be  true,  exact  and  "  on  the  level,"  and  prove  all  our 
work  with  our  level. 

Next  we  should  have  in  our  cabinet  a  small  steel 
square.  This  is  a  simple  right  angle  of  steel,  usually 
marked  as  a  f  ootrule,  and  we  should  never  do  any  work 
of  construction,  even  if  it  be  only  a  wooden  box,  with- 
out testing  our  work  that  it  be  square,  right  angled 
and  true.  There  are  many  styles  of  squares,  from  the 
simple  steel  "  try  "  square  to  a  combined  straight-edge, 
level,  bevel  and  square.  For  making  drawings  and 


SOME  CLOSING  SUGGESTIONS  157 

plans  for  work  we  shall  also  find  a  T-square  very  con- 
venient. We  should  have  also  an  adjustable  try-square 
for  forming  angles  and  bevels. 

Next  to  the  level  and  square  is  the  plumb.  This  we 
should  make  of  wood  for  our  use,  buying  only  the  iron 
plumb-bob  at  the  hardware  store.  Borrow  a  plumb  of 
some  mason,  and  use  it  as  a  pattern.  The  level  gives 
us  a  true  horizontal  plane.  The  square  proves  our 
work  to  be  true  and  right  angled,  and  the  plumb  proves 
that  any  structure  we  may  build  stands  erect,  and  that 
its  sides  are  vertical  or  "on  line."  The  plumb  proves 
whether  our  work  be  "  out  of  line"  or  not,  and  any- 
thing "out  of  line"  is  false  and  disagreeable. 

The  next  essential  is  a  rule  of  some  kind,  the  most 
convenient  being  the  common  wooden  folding  rule, 
marked  in  inches  and  fractions.  A  small  rule  that  fits 
into  the  vest  pocket  will  soon  prove  to  be  of  daily  use 
in  all  that  we  may  do  with  tools.  With  these  four — 
the  rule,  square,  level  and  plumb — we  can  use  any  tool, 
and,  testing  our  work  as  we  proceed,  know  with  cer- 
tainty that  it  is  correct  in  dimensions,  is  true,  square 
and  level. 

A  large  part  of  all  modern  work  is  now  put  together 
with  screws,  or  is  bolted  together  with  nut  and  bolt. 
All  pipes,  steam,  gas,  and  water-fittings  are  now  put 
together  with  joints  that  screw  together  with  couplings 
or  other  applications  of  screws.  So  we  shall  find  a 
common  screwdriver  indispensable,  both  in  putting 
woodwork  together  or  taking  it  apart.  For  nuts  and 
screws  in  all  pipe  and  metal  work,  we  shall  require  a 


158  TOOLS  AND  MACHINES 

good  wrench,  and  the  best  style  for  our  purposes  is  the 
wrench  having  adjustable  jaws  and  called  a  "  monkey- 
wrench.  ' '  For  tightening  up  a  leaky  gaspipe  we  need 
a  pipe- wrench,  and  for  all  ordinary  purposes  small 
burner-pliers  with  roughened  jaws  will  be  sufficient. 

So  many  things  are  sold  by  weight  or  are  measured 
by  weight,  that  we  shall  find  that  some  kind  of  weigh- 
ing-machine or  spring  balance  will  be  useful.  We  can 
find  them  at  the  hardware  store  in  every  style  and  at 
all  prices.  A  cheap  and  convenient  style  is  a  spring 
balance,  as  it  is  easily  carried  in  the  hand  and  can  be 
hung  upon  a  hook  in  our  cabinet.  If  we  use  our  saws 
and  wish  to  do  good  work,  we  shall  find  that  a  miter- 
box  will  be  very  useful  in  sawing  wood  at  an  angle. 
It  is  a  simple,  narrow  box  of  wood  open  at  the  top, 
and  having  sawcuts  at  different  angles  in  the  sides  of 
the  box.  The  best  plan  is  to  borrow  one  from  the 
nearest  carpenter  as  a  pattern,  and  with  your  own 
tools,  to  make  your  own  miter-box. 

There  should  also  be  a  quantity  of  cut  nails,  wire 
nails,  barbed  nails,  tacks  and  brads.  An  assortment  of 
screws  of  different  sizes,  a  few  double-pointed  tacks, 
staples,  and  screw  eyes  and  screw  hooks  will  always  be 
useful.  The  best  plan  is  to  get  at  first  a  few  tools, 
say  a  hammer,  two  saws,  an  awl,  a  gimlet,  a  chisel  and 
a  knife,  and  then  add  to  the  stock  as  we  learn  to  do 
more  and  better  work.  Lastly,  paint  a  neat  sign  on 
the  inside  of  the  cabinet: — "A  Place  for  Everything 
and  Everything  in  Its  Place" 


INDEX 


Abraders,  136,  139,  141. 
Adz,  86,  88. 

Agricultural  Implements,  20. 
Anvil,  33,  34,  39. 

beak,  33. 

Apparatus,  defined,  21. 
Auger,  127,  128. 

—  Wiring-,   127. 
Awl,  30,  125,  126. 

—  Bone-,  125. 
Ax,  80,  84,  85. 

—  Battle-,  88. 

—  Broad-,  85. 

—  Fireman's,   86. 

—  Hand-,  83. 

—  Iceman's,  86. 

—  Jedding-,  87. 

—  Pole-,   88. 

—  Prehistoric,  81. 

—  Roofer's,  87. 

—  Stone-,  87. 

Bat,  31. 

Batting-machine,  44. 
Beader,  Hand-,  78. 
Beetle,  32. 
Bell,  Fog-,  32. 
Bezel,  60. 
Bill-hook,  87. 
Billiard  Cue,  31. 
Bit,  75. 

—  Counter-sunk,  131. 


Bit-stock,   128,  129. 
Blanks,  40. 
Boiler,  19. 
Borers,   125. 
Brace,  128,  129. 
Braiding,   146. 
Breakers,  Pig-iron,  44. 
Bush-hook,  87. 

Camera,  153. 

Cavil,  87. 

Chemical  action,  18,  19. 

Chisel,  23,  30,  59,  60. 

—  Boasting-,    70. 

—  Bolt-,  67. 

—  Box-,  65. 

—  Burr-,  69. 

—  Calking-,  68. 

—  Center-,  68. 

—  Diamond-pointed,  66. 

—  Chasing-,  68. 

—  Chipping-,  67. 

—  Cold-,  67. 

—  Corner-,  66. 

—  Cross-cut,   68. 

—  Framing-,  65. 

—  Hardy,  68. 

—  Ice-,  69. 
-Flogging-,  67. 

—  Marteline-,  70. 

—  Mortise-lock,  65. 

—  Paring-,  65. 


160 


INDEX 


Chisel,  Pneumatic,  71. 

—  Rod-,    68. 

—  Sash-,  65. 

—  Splitting-,  67,  68. 

—  Socket,  65. 

—  Tang,   65. 

—  Triangular,  69. 
Chopper,  Meat-,  92. 
Claw,  30. 

Clamp,  62. 
Cleaver,  87. 
Club,  25. 

—  War-,    25. 

Cold  Storage  Apparatus, 

—  House,  22. 
Concrete,  19. 
Oosshead,  126. 
Cutter,  Feed-,  89. 

—  Slaw,  92. 

—  Tobacco,  88. 
Cutlery,  59. 
Cutter-head,   102. 

Dental  Instruments,  20. 
Distaff,  144,  145. 
Distilling  Apparatus,  21. 
Draw-knife,  55. 

-  Prehistoric,  56. 
Drill,  129,  132. 

—  Diamond,  134. 

—  Gang-,  23. 
-Pneumatic,   131,   135. 

—  Ratchet,   130. 
-Bow-,  130,  135. 

-  Rock-,  45,  133. 
Drumstick,  32. 
Drop-forgings,  40. 
press,  39,  40. 

Edge-tools,  59,  74. 


21. 


Egg-beater,  21. 
Electrical  Apparatus,  21. 
Emery-wheel,   139. 
Experiments,  26,  28,  51,  52,  53, 
61,  62,  63,  75,  89,  97,  116. 

Faucet,  129. 
File,  136,  137. 
-Double-cut,  137. 

—  Four-square,  137. 

-  Knife-,  57.  ' 
-Rasp,  137. 

Flail,  32. 
Flint,  48. 
Flintlock,  32. 
Fire  Apparatus,  21. 

Gavel,  32. 

Gimlet,  23,  126,  127. 
Gimlet-point,    126. 
Glass,  Cut,   140. 
Golf  Instruments,  31. 
Gouge,  66. 
Griddle-iron,   19. 
Grinders,   136. 
Grinding-machine,  139,  140. 
Grindstone,   141. 
Grinding- wheels,  140. 
Grater,   138. 

Hammer,    11,    24,    26,    34,    35, 
38. 

—  Atmospheric,  45. 

-  Blacksmith's,  30. 

—  Bricklayer's,  31. 

—  Claw-,  26,  29. 

—  Carpenter's,  26,  29. 

—  Compound-face,  32. 

—  Commencing-,  33. 

—  Chasing-,  31. 


INDEX 


161 


Hammer,  Creasing-,  31. 

—  Deadstroke-,    44. 
-Drop-,  44. 

—  Finishing-,  33. 

—  Goldbeater's,  31. 
face,  26,  33. 

—  -handle,  26. 

-  -head,  26,  33. 

—  Machine-,   38. 

—  Magnetized,   33. 

—  Miner's,   31. 

-  Origin  of  the,  24,  25,  26. 

-  Paver's,  36. 
-Pneumatic,  45,  46,  47. 
-Power-,  37,  38. 
-Sledge-,    30. 

—  Spreading-,  33. 

—  Steam-,  43,  44. 

—  Stone,    25. 

—  Stonemason's,  30. 

—  Tack-,  30. 

—  Trip-  or  Tilt-,  41,  42. 

—  Types  of,  30. 
Halberd,  57,  88. 
Hatchet,  82,  83. 

—  Lather's,  82. 

—  Shingling-,  82. 

—  Stone,  80. 

Harvesting-machine,  111. 
Helve,  57. 

Hoe,  19. 
Howell,   80. 

Iron,    75. 

Joinery,  64. 

Joint,   Dovetail,   64. 

—  Groove-,    77. 
—  Matched,  77. 

—  Mortise  and  tenon,  64. 


Joint,  Swivel-,  32. 
—  Tongue-,  77. 
Jointer,   79. 


Kettle,  19. 
Kerf,  115. 
Knife,  11,  48,  49. 

-Bread-,  53. 

--blade,  48,  54. 

—  Budding-,  54. 
-Butcher-,   54. 
-Butter-,  53. 

—  Cane-,  54. 

—  Carving-,   53. 

—  Chopping-,    54. 

—  Cheese-,  54. 

-  Corn-,  88. 

—  Cream-,  57. 
-Draw-,  55. 
-Fish-,  53. 

—  Forging  a,  58. 
-Fruit-,  53, 

—  Grafting-,  54. 

—  Grass-,  55. 

—  Half-moon,  56. 

—  Hay-,  55. 

—  -handle,  £4,  57. 

—  Hedge-,  88. 

—  History  of  the,  49. 

—  Oyster-,  54. 
-Pen-,  153. 
-Pivoted,  88,  89. 

-  Pocket-,  49,  50. 

—  Prehistoric,  49. 

—  Pruning-,   54. 
-Race-,  56. 

rest,  57. 

—  Stone,  48. 

—  Table-,  53. 


162 


INDEX 


Knitter,  149. 
Knitting,   146. 

Lathe,  described,  23,  96. 
-Metal-,  96,   106. 

—  Power-,  99. 

—  Wood-,  96,  97. 
Launch,   11. 
Level,  155. 
Loom,   147. 

—  Jacquard,  148. 

Machine,  defined,  21,  22,  154. 

—  Box-making,   154. 

—  Box-nailing,  45. 

—  Carpet-beating,  44. 

—  Chain-making,  154. 

—  Composing-,   154. 

—  Hoisting-,  154. 

—  Ice-,   22. 

—  Laundry,  154. 

—  Milling-,   107. 

—  Mowing-,   107. 

—  Pegging-,   45. 

—  Pressing-,    154. 

—  Scutching-,   44. 

—  Sewing-,  11,  149. 

—  Slotting-,   109. 

—  Spinning-,  146. 

shop,  106. 

Mallet,  31. 

—  Croquet-,  31. 
Marking-iron,  68. 
Matched  boards,  77. 
Maul,  32. 
Mechanical   action,    18. 

—  mixture,    18. 
Morikey,    37. 
Mortise,   63. 
Motors,  154. 


Mower,  Lawn-,   111. 
Musical  instruments,  20. 


Nail,  26,  27.- 

—  Driving  "  home "' 
head,  27. 

—  -set,  29. 

—  -puller,  30. 
Nailer,  45. 
Needle,  11,  146. 

—  Crochet-,  14. 

—  Darning-,  149. 

Oar,  11. 
Obsidian,  48. 
Organ,  20. 
Over-shave,  80. 

Pan,    19. 
-Frying-,  19. 
Parer,  Apple,  92. 
Peen,  30. 
Pencil,  13. 
Pianola,  32. 
Pick,  30,  88. 

—  Mattock,  88 
Pile,  37. 

Pile-driver,  37,  38, 
Plane,  74,  75. 

—  Astregal,  77. 
-  Edge-,  76. 

—  Panel,  76. 

—  Fluting-,  77. 

—  Long,  76. 

—  Fore-,  76. 

—  Hand-rail,  77. 

—  Fillet,   77. 

—  Grooving-,   77. 
handle,  75. 

—  Iron-,   75. 


a,  29, 


INDEX 


163 


Plane,  Ice-,  80. 

—  Jack-,   76. 

—  Marking-,  78. 

—  Quarter-round,    77. 
-  Ogee,  77,  78. 
-Sash-,    76. 

—  Scraping-,    78. 

—  Scratching-,  78. 
-Side-,  77,  78. 

—  Smoothing-,  76. 

—  Snow -ice,  80. 

—  Ovolo,  77. 
-Rabbet-,   78. 

stock,   74. 

—  Tonguing-,  77. 
-Try-,  76. 
-Universal,  78,  79. 

Planer,   Metal,    107. 

—  Iron-,  108. 
-Wood-,   101.   ' 

Pen,   153. 

Plaiting,  146. 

Pliers,  157. 

Plow,  78. 

Plumb,  156. 

Polishers,   139,   142. 

Pot,  19. 

Potter's  Wheel,  94,  95. 

Power,  Water-,  42. 

—  Steam-,  43. 

—  -tool,  39. 
-Horse-,   38. 
Punch,  130,  131. 

Press,  Printing-,  23,  153,  154. 
-Drop-,  39,  40. 

Rammer,  31. 
-Post-,  31. 
Ramrod,  31. 
Rasp,  137,  138. 


Razor,   56. 

Reamer,    131. 

Reaper,  113. 

Refrigerator,  21. 

Refrigerating  Apparatus,  22. 

Rivet,  125. 

Rolling-mill,  23. 

Rolling-pin,  23. 

Router,  103. 

Rule,  Foot,  60,  156. 

Runcina,   74. 

Safe/  137. 
Sandblast,   140. 
Sandpaper,  139. 
Saw,  11,  23,  114,  115. 

—  Band-,  123. 

—  Circular,   122. 

—  Cross-cut,  117. 

—  Compass,    119. 
-Fret-,  123. 

—  Gang-,    122. 
-Hack-,  119,   120. 

—  Ice-,    120. 
-Jig-,  123. 
-Keyhole-,    119. 

—  -pit,    119. 
-Rip-,   117. 

—  Stone-,  141. 

—  Swinging-,    122. 
-Wood-,   119. 
-  -frame,  119. 
--mill,  23,   120,   121. 

—  -set,  115. 
Sawing-table,    122. 
Screw,  127. 
Scissors,  89,  90,  91. 

—  Manicure,  90. 
Scythe,  56,  57. 
Shave,  55. 


164 


INDEX 


Shave,  Spoke-,  56,  74. 
Shaper,  102,  103. 

—  Metal-,    109. 
Shears,  89,  91. 

—  Bench-,  92. 

—  Hydraulic,   93. 

—  Jeweler's,  93. 

—  Pruning-,    91. 

—  Sheep-shearing,  90,  91. 

—  Tinsmith's,  91. 
Shearing-cut,  89,  92. 
Shovel,  30. 

Sickle,  55,  110. 
Skillet,  19. 
Slicer,  92. 
Snips,  92. 
Snuffers,  91. 
Sounder,  153. 
Souple,  32. 
Spinning,  145. 
-wheel-,  145. 
Spoon,   19. 
Square,  156. 
Stamp,  Rubber,  153. 

—  -mill,  41. 
Stamps,  41. 

-Battery  of,  41. 
Stone-dressing,  69. 
Stones,  Sharpening,   141. 
Surgical  Instruments,  20. 


Sword,  57. 

Tackle,  Fishing,  22. 

-Hoisting,  22. 
Tang,  65. 
Tenon,  64. 
Threading,   144. 
Toat,  75. 
Tomahawk,  81. 
Tongs,   37. 
Tongue,  64. 

-  Bell-,  32. 
Tools,  11,  17,  22,  151,  152. 

—  Origin  of,  12. 
-Woodcutting,  92. 

—  Wrecking-,  86. 
Tool,  of  percussion,  27. 
Tool-rest,  97. 
Typewriter,   153. 

Utensils,  19. 
Vise,  61,  62. 

Weaving,  144,  146. 
Wedge,  30. 

Whirling-table,  94,  95. 
Whisk,  80. 
Woodcraft,  85. 
Wrench,  Monkey,  157. 


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